In my experience, HP machines are very good. At work we switched to Dells, and I absolutely hate them. I've encountered a lot of problems, bad drivers, puffed up battery, stupid Dell software (like the piece of shit WavesMax that comes with the audio driver and needs to run in the background, otherwise it won't switch from speakers to headphones when you plug them in; it also applies shitty audio effects on every every audio device. If you turn it off and switch the playback device, it turns back on).