Personal Laptop Manufacturers Experience

Hi everyone

I was interested in what everybody's experience was with laptops, not desktops, from various brands. I'm thinking along the lines of HP, Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Dell and any other major brands. Specifically around the £500/600 mark, so not high end but not low end budget laptops either.

I'm asking mainly about hardware reliability and build quality, but also the quality of helplines, etc.
I know that there are sites out there that rate the brands, but they don't always give a true image of why they are like.

Thanks to every who replies.

I'm running out of brands to suggest in that price range. I make purchasing recommendations for friends and a few businesses and I do the support for those computers once they are in use. The last several Toshiba laptops have had keyboard problems. This has happened in the low end $450 USD Toshiba laptops as well as some $1200 USD ones.... very frustrating.

I've also seen keyboard problems in Dell laptops in that price range. The Dell laptop that I'm on now has the cheapest optical drive tray that I've ever seen, the screen dimming does not always work and their keyboard layout is not that great; but this laptop was free to me via my employer... so not my choice.

I personally buy Dell notebooks from their business sections. Specifically the Latitude line. I don't know what you money figure is in US dollars but I bought a E6420 last December for around $1000. I did get the smallest HDD and only 2GBs of RAM as I put a SSD in the main HDD bay and a 7200RPM 750GB Seagate in the media bay with a caddy I bought after market. I also installed 8GBs of Crucial RAM. Total was just under $1400. Works like a treat and it has a 3 year warranty.

I've own several Dell notebooks, and Inspiron i8200 and 4 different C series latitudes. One C600 and 3 C610s. As far as I know they are all still running. I still have the i8200 and sold 3 of the 4 C610's (I bought them Off Lease) and then last christmas gave the last one away when I got the new E6420. The friend I gave my last C610 to already had one that I sold him years ago and they are both still working fine. That is not to say that all Dell notebooks, of any model, will last as long as the ones I've had. I just hope my new one lasts as long as the others. But then I do not abuse them. I always try to keep them cool and clean.

I've had an Asus K61-IC for years and other than the Blu-Ray drive crapping out, this thing is a beast. It hasn't always been treated like it should have and it's still running like a champ most of the time. Before this an Acer crapped out on me after about a year and the Gateway I had before that didn't last me long at all. From now on I'm planning on sticking with Asus for my laptops and tablets and most of my Desktop Components.