>I'm a bit biased as I used to work for Dell and I love their computers. But their inspiron and latitudes are some real nice portables. I personally would never buy a compaq and don't know much about the IBM's. But if cust. service is important to you then Dell is by far the way to go for sure..


You can say that again! The service has been exemplary! I especially like the new Resolution assistant. So far it resulted in the replacement of a hard drive (without data loss) because the technician could perform remote diagnostics. On another, an overnight replacement of a ZIP drive that died with the "click of death." They even went to the trouble of getting Iomega to do a free replacement of the ZIP disks that had been damaged during the drive's death throes. On one occasion, a technician at the help desk, took the trouble of coming to my home in person and installing a flash BIOS upgrade and some other stuff, totally on his own time. (turned out his family lived nearby and he was visiting them for the weekend/holiday.) I later was instrumental in assisting him in getting new employment after their layoff this spring.
All this made me feel like that HUGE corporation is really interested in my own little problems.