My Dell notebook works fine. I've had it for about a year and no problems. It was cheap, easy to use, and is great for work.
Depends on Your country. In most country DELL is good on support they are easily replacing if any goes wrong. My vote for DELL. but i am using HP
I'm currently using a Lenovo. However, my brother says DELL is the best. They have great support. My brother has a DELL for 3 years already and it's working like new.
HP is horrible for laptops, absolutely awful Heat issues, slow after a very short time of ownership, etc. Adapters break, driver issues. Just not a good company at all. I don't mind their desktops as much but everyone who has had an HP that I know of, dislike HP. Lenovo and Dell seem to be the better brands, I've also heard good things about Asus. Lenovo is known for building sturdy laptops but are kind of bulky. Dells are nice and portable. And asus have great specs, great quality of hardware etc.
I have a HP Pavilion dv7 and it works unbelievably good all the time. I would not go with a custom expensive computer because most computers are getting outdated every 2 years. It will soon be getting outdated every year in the future.
Dell Laptop is best for everyone. I have Dell Laptop last 3 years and it's working new. Dell customer support services are very fast. If any wrongs with your laptop they can replace or change your laptop. So, my vote also for DELL.
Buy a MAC, one you go mac you never go back. Since owning a mac, i will NEVER buy a windows pc again. A mac will run most if not all the programs you want. Now with steam and the app store apple has a lot of games as well. The mac air is amazing and fast. New models are coming out very soon. http://www.apple.com/macbookair/
I would recommend you to check out ProCompare.com (http://procompare.com/top/notebooks). They have a recommendation engine that ranks laptops and other tech products based on ratings and reviews from a community of trusted IT professionals. They also have a cool personalization slider that lets you personalize the results based on the criteria that are most important to YOU.
Which 1 to choose completely depends upon you whether you need for office use/ normal entertainment or for pure gaming/animation. Dell Inspiron is the best m using it, I am using for designing includes photoshop, illustrator. The service of Dell is better than rest of the laptop companies.