I'm certainly no expert, but I have used a Dell before, and they're nice computers. The one I used was at work, and it did seem to crash or need rebooting frequently, but I think that's because we were still using Windows 95 on it when we should have been using NT or 2000.

I have a Hewlett Packard box at home, and it's nice enough. I do have sporadic problems with it freezing up and having to be restarted the hard way; I have no idea why other than that it's still pretty low on memory for the type of software I'm running on it. Oh, and of course Windows ME.

I would say don't buy the latest and greatest model. Get something that's slightly below the cutting edge...it'll be cheaper, but it will still meet your needs. That's what I did. I could have shelled out more money and gotten a Pentium IV, but I got an Athlon 1.2ghtz instead and I'm very happy with it. But maybe that's because I upgraded to that from a Packard Smell 486 66mghtz. What a peice of poo.

Gri"oh, and teach--THANKS 4 TEH HUG!!!11"shny