The notebook market isn't being friendly to Dell this year, and most notably so in the last quarter. Recent figures show Dell slipping, and the computer giant is expected to lose even more ground to rivals HP and Acer -- particularly in the notebook segment. Sitting at number three for worldwide laptop sales, Dell expects to move around 5-6 million units in the third quarter of this year. This compares to HP and Acer, who are both anticipating nearly double that.

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It will be interesting to watch. We know very few happy HP client businesses who switched to HP with SATA drives and Windows VISTA. Huge numbers of HP laptop failures with long and slow success in getting them back up and running properly... too many dead motherboards, or issues requiring motherboard replacments. Eventually HP came through with help even after the warranty had long expired, but that didn't result in much solace for the people I know.
Most of our people are going back to Lenovo or higher end Dell laptops.

Still, the purchasing agents for the Governments and large corporate units don't care what users and managers think... They are looking at the bottom dollar at a time when the dollar is incredibly important... I wonder why the repair and maintenance cost is not more closely intertwined with the purchasing folks?

when hp dell and acer are all built equal, why pay the premium?

i've seen more dells die just after the warranty expires than any other notebook, at least in the recent years..

in my mind hp are the most robust, then acer, then everyone else then dell, although a few years ago i'd of said dell were the best quality

I am one technician who does not believe Dell and Acer are built "equal"...