I know the the plural of anecdote is not data, but fundamentally I was trying to explain the hostility I expressed earlier as not just random fanboy fapping, or somesuch. And since then I've asked around, and it seems like alot of the people I know have had problems, again, each one is an anecdote, but it keeps building up, if you will. That and the fact that my main complaint was about the customer service, who basically told me "No, you have no option but to pay us more money to fix this mistake that is our fault." and that makes *sense* within the context that Dell's customer service has been widely panned, and that comparisons made by official reviewers of such things have not been all that good. (mind you, customer service *always* seems to become a problem to computer companies sooner or later, but there's "annoying" and "enraging", Dell fell into the latter..)
In short, my summary is that *if* something goes wrong with a Dell and your not a corporate customer, the likelyhood is that you are SOL. Since things go wrong sooner or later...