Hi. I am looking for a new laptop computer. Anybody have positive or negative experiences with any of these brands: Toshiba, Sony, Dell?

I have experience with Sony, Alienware (Dell), and Toshiba.

Sony (5 stars): I have never had a problem with either of the Sony Laptops which I purchased new in the last two years. I play high end video games on them and they have never crashed on me. I almost forgot to mention that I took the sony laptop on deployment to afghanistan with me, and still it never failed.

Alienware (3 stars): The alienware laptop is my newest Laptop. I am disappointed with it after being spoiled by Sony. Within 3 weeks of firing up this laptop it had a unrecoverable crash which technical support had to take over and reload the computer from scratch. It crashed all the time in the middle of games. On the plus side it has all the bells and whistles…from color lighted keys with 36 color options, big screen, hi end laptop graphics card, tons of ram, etc.

Toshiba (2 stars): My wife had a toshiba satellite a few years ago, it was crashing all the time (when it wasn’t doing anything but just sitting), the fan started making a humming noise, the power supply stopped working, we ended up giving it away for 5$ at a yard sale for scrap.

My family have had 8 Toshiba laptops between them. One had a bad hard drive, and another had poor connections between the battery and charger (multiple fixes did not appropriately address the issue). Apart from that, they have been rock solid and reliable.

Amongst friends, Dells seem to have lasted 3 years on average. Some have been good, some not so good. However I would recommend Dell over HP, Compaq (same company) or Acer. A survey on longevity I saw early last year rated HP and Acer the worst, with Asus and Toshiba being the best.

I haven’t had much to do with Sony, but they appear to be great machines that are a little over-priced. If you can get a good deal, they may be worth a shot.

Personally, I would go for an Asus. They have a good reliability record, and you can get some good hardware for a competitive price.