Hey,
I think costumization, price and service are needed with laptops because they are hard to upgrade, if at all.
So heres some of my experience with dell.
not trying to give dell too much advertising here, but they have excellent costumer service, which sometimes really saves your ass.
On the other hand its a shame that i even had issues with my dell xps m1530 but as we all know these things happen at apple just as much (overheating/exploding batts etc)
I was in Ireland visiting family (i bouth the laptop in ger) and one ram stick died. Called the service, ran a few diagnose tools, withing the next day i had a new ram stick.
Later my Batterie died, i couldnt recharge it anymore and my HDD was pretty loud. These are the parts of the laptop that are known and labled as parts that get used up fast especially if treated wrong, so the varenty on those is just one year, sometimes less. Anyway in my case i had luck and they replaced those parts, maybe becuz i pointed out that the gfx cards heatpipe might be not installed correct and caused this by overheating...
sooo
A lot of issues for one laptop, but dell handled everything and i didnt pay a cent - replacements batts are 150€ ... maybe apple & others are just as good, but due to discounts i saved alot of money.. soo yeaaaa for dell
Oh yes and the performence is good to, cant say to much about the fps though - still using a shitty 5400rpm drive, didnt think straight at that time. :O
