Dude, I Hope You're Not Getting a Dell

A few years back I bought my first laptop, and at the time, Dell was the popular choice and I didn't know nearly what I know now about laptops. Without having anything to compare it to, it seemed like a great laptop at first; then the problems started. A couple months in my battery failed. I was still under warranty so I sent it in and they sent me a replacement. Of course it wasn't the nice 9-cell battery you buy with the laptop, it was the cheaper 6-cell. Well then about a year after I got my laptop, I had issues with the power-supply. The cord was undamaged but I must have been getting surges or amperage issues, which destroyed my battery again. So I bought a new power cord and bought an off brand battery instead of shelling over $150 for the Dell brand. Things were ok for about another year until my hard drive failed. I am always very careful to power off my laptop before transporting it (unlike many college students) and used several advanced programs to protect my computer from things that could harm my computer from the software side. That didn't really matter because it was a physical issue anyways. So I bought a new HD and even upgraded to Windows 7 (a great decision). My laptop worked for several more months until the screen started to flicker. I was worried so I backed up all my data and a couple days later the bottom right corner of the screen stated to turn black and very hot. Soon I smelled and saw smoke coming from the screen. It was an issue with my LCD inverter, which can only be replaced with the whole screen. This was it, my laptop was completely done, but I actually felt a little liberated from Dell. Although it was an expensive lesson, I did learn not to buy a Dell. Those were just the major issues I had, not to mention tons of driver issues that Dell was very reluctant to help with. I am on the search for a new laptop and I think I have settled on an Asus, which is a relatively unheard of company, but has been putting out some really solid laptops lately.