Happy Extermi-Date!

That's why you should never buy a Dell.
I got a Dell laptop for my birthday and it was the slowest piece of junk ever until the left hand side of the screen decided to suddenly stop working right on schedule after the warranty ran out. Built in obsolescence at its finest.
I then got an HP and I've never looked back (sorry, but I like my PCs).

You can lay the blame on a brand name due to a single incident, or you can do the research. I've heard the same stories about why not to by an HP. The truth is, as far as computers go, is that there are good batches, and bad batches. Some models have great outcomes with few problems, but other times there are particular models with so many issues it's not even funny. I don't know if anyone else has had experience with Toshiba laptops, but twice in a row my stepdad had bought their brand, and on both they started getting vertical lines of various colours showing up on the screen. He replaced the monitor of the first one, and it eventually got those lines showing up again. Still don't know what the issue is with that, if it's a fault of the production of the screens or what.

@Gauldar - you know if your stepdad buys a Toshiba a third time he's officially a moron and it's legal for strangers to walk up and sucker punch him right in the gut really really really hard - right?

At school we had Toshiba laptops ; they were so prone to disaster that we used to call them Shitoba.