Originally Posted by pepatrick

A failing hard drive has nothing to do with the manufacturer of the laptop. Most of the Dell laptops use the hitachi travelstar drives which was a division recently sold by IBM. Basically you are buying support. The parts for the most part are interchangeable. The T41 is discontinued so you will be getting a used or refurbished unit. Dell and IBM make the best laptops but for the money you get more value from a Dell. Look at the Inspiron 9300 or if you are looking at smaller and more portable..look at the Latitude D810 and D610.

As far as having a bad experience with Dell, most of us have had little gliches with our X5 and we continue to buy them because like the performance. The same goes for the Dell. Get a loaded up Inspiron 6000 or 9300 or Latitude D610 or D810, there are not many laptops that will out perform them...And...over all...they are still more reliable than most.