it depends on what is ur requirements some sony are crappy and some dells are great depends on whether u r a student, IT professional, or just for email and internet... Some business models of Dell are made to stand torture but are expensive. Toshiba has some nice features and u can get fairly cheap sony vaio is overrated. lower models of dell are crappy but high end dells perform not less than any other $2500 laptops... so it depends on what u want to use the laptop with and what model u buy. Dell,Hp,Toshiba,Sony,Lenova,Ibm...