At the shop I work at Acer and Asus are the best. We sell more of them and see less of them in for service. Consumer dell laptops are horrible though...
i have 2 of them one for the first ones that came out running linux and another about 3 month old and i have never had a problem with mine. i even do a little bit of gaming on my windows 7 one.
I am looking at getting a Dell soon. Mind elaborating. I have heard great things about them from my friends, but I see so many people on the internet say they are horrible. It concerns me. I was looking at getting the Studio XPS 16.
Asus has netbooks with 14 hr battery life. I personally like the PC setup at the dorm and a small and cheap netbook for classes. Still cheaper than an alienware