Dell Inspiron is the cheap Dell line. Why? Because it uses cheap components (that don't last). Other Dell lines are good quality, but WAY overpriced. (Most other laptop manufacturers put out products that are like the Dell Inspirons.) Acer (including their Gateway line) and ASUS (not in any particular order) give you the best bang for the buck, and have for about 6 years now. (The Acer I'm typing this on runs 24/7, and has for about 5 years. I'd like to replace it, but I can't justify spending money when it's still running like new.) My wife just replaced her Acer laptop - after 5 years of intensive gaming on it. It's getting a bit flaky (I can still use it for development, but 2 seconds of "flaky" in a game gets you killed). She games on her new ASUS now.
I personally like Asus products, I have had great experiences with them and Asus is always pushing the envelope with innovation. They build beefy machines too, Quad Core i7 CPUs, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSDs w/ brilliant large screen displays. Some of the best laptops in my opinion are manufactured by Asus.
Yes - for about the past 8 years, it's been overpriced crap. I used to spec nothing but HP (my company maintained over 400 PCs at a time). Since then I wouldn't buy (or even take for free) a single HP computer.
buy lenovo or asus ,with $500 you can buy maks Core I5 ivy bridge m processor, 3 Gb Ram, 500 Gb Hdd, Vga card 1 Gb dedicated ati radeon/nvidia, 14 inch,...