Go for price and warranty.
not to
but all the extra money you're paying for a mac is only for the O/S...the guts are pretty much the same as any other laptop.
Dell is usually a decent purchase because their warranty is good and they are pretty customer friendly.
We've had a toshiba laptop that we've been pretty happy with for a couple of years now too...
No matter what you hear about a brand....someone will have a horror story about them.....every company has an issue at one time or another.
Bottom line is warranty....and a good Antivirus/Antispam/Firewall product, and your Laptop should be fine.
A lot of people blame their PC Problems on the hardware, but 99% of the time it's because they surfed somewhere they shouldn't have or downloaded something they shouldn't have.....and got a bad case of internet cooties.