Every brand has good models, and every brand has bad ones.

First of all, I'd like to start with my easiest decision and say that Asus laptops rock. Most of my relatives/friends use an Asus laptop, and they are well assembled, fast and reliable. I myself have an Asus netbook, an EeePC1001HA, a 2-3 year old model. I even stepped on the poor fella while walking across my room at night (protip: never leave your laptop on the ground), but it is still free from scratches and works like a charm. I never heard of an Asus disaster story from my peers.

Dell laptops are fine by my opinion as well. If it weren't for my friends' stories, I'd recommend them just like the Asus ones. However, I've heard a lot of complaints over Dell laptops' assembly quality. Also, my friend's Dell died on him after six months. However, he was the one who executed the Toshiba on the picture, so I'd put this info in the irrelevant folder.

Lenovo was, by my opinion, horrible when the first series came out. However, since they have the ThinkPad brand, they produce ironclad machines. My girlfriend uses a Lenovo, and it received some serious abuse over the months, but it works fine, is fast, and it has a huge battery capacity. I used it a lot, and I see a lot of my friends using Lenovo books. Also, most companies that repair laptops say that Lenovo laptops are among the rarest guests in the repair shops.

Acer is a weird one. It would be the easiest for me to simply say that they suck. I have heard so many stories about them melting, burning, etc. that I'd never buy an Acer laptop in my life. My friend had 2 Acer laptops. The first one died as the VGA card got burned off from the motherboard, as the laptop was used for hardcore gaming. However, I think that most other laptops with Nvidia cards would end up like that (melting video cards are Nvidia's specialty). His second laptop was an Acer as well, a 3830TG. It works very nicely, it has a metal case and two VGA cards for those who want to play occassionally. However, I'd still say Asus or Dell over Acer every time.

HP is a frequent visitor of PC repair shops as well. Although none of my HP user relatives/friends experienced problems with HP, nor myself, I keep hearing that we should not buy one. I think that for basic purposes, HP is still fine, and they have some really cheap laptops.

Toshiba laptops are, despite the picture at the top, very great and the assembly quality is great in them. Honestly, I did not hear much about Toshiba errors, but I haven't heard much about the opposide side either. Let's take that as a good point on Toshiba's side.

There are many other brands such as MSI and others, but I'd say that choose from the larger brands to ensure safety. Or, if you want to go for the best and say that money ain't an issue, go with the Razer Blade.