how do the brands stack up?

With regard to custom built desktops I think this is the only way to go.
I built my first one from scratch quite recently and it was easier than I'd though given the excellent tutorials on this and other forums (and youtube).
Prior to that I had two custom built by small local firms.
I researched every part of the pc- right down to the case fans- priced up the components from online sites and then took my list in to the local guy.
I had reckoned up the parts to £800 cost to me. He gave me a price of £860 plus a 12 month warranty.
Can't go wrong with that. I bought it home, plugged in the monitor and keyboard and I was set to go.
Given the small cost of having it built and the convenience and warranty it was hardly worth building the latest one myself but I wanted to see if I could do it:)

Next time I will buy a Toshibe. Right now I have two Gateways which are great (one is over 3 years old) and one HP which is so, so - the WiFi broke and I have to use a stick.
My HP desktop is very good and the Dell desktop is junk. Despite a quad processor, it does not perform and when you open it, it looks real cheap (does not even have bays for the disks. They are bolted to the frame).

NoN said:

The second was an HP that had last three years, the battery is weak but still hold 50 minutes powered.

pparks1 said:

3+ years on the same battery is quite good. These are really rated for about 1 year and begin to dwindle quite a bit between 1 year and 2 year. i've always recommended replacing laptop batteries every 2 years if you travel and rely on portability.

Yes i recon that three years are pretty good! I have regulary make it works on battery to drain it as much as possible, every month....

This thread should had a poll with brand, so could we have seen clearly which are the prefered ones!:)

On my actual Acer brand i hope that those three years battery performance will retain good aswell.

Next one will like to have an Asus i think.