Knock on wood, I've had good luck with Dell pc's and laptops. As far as I know, they don't use cheap parts but I don't know for a fact. I have a cousin that swears by Mac but he doesn't use it for much more than checking emails and surfing the net. I prefer Windows, especially 7. It seems very smooth, user friendly, and enjoyable to use. My old pc was running XP and I loved that one although I am currently in the process of trying to install Linux on it.