Asus, Gateway, HP, Toshiba, Acer for quality and performance for your money in the order I listed them.
As a person who has probably fixed over 500 laptops in my life so far I can say Dell is about the biggest pile of dung you can buy. Dont waste your money. Then again if nobody bought Dell I would not make much cash after my full time job. I swear to god. Every recomendation I have ever made on laptop purchase has been solid. People that own Dell already or dont listen and buy them anyways are 90% of my buisness. Such a hudge POS line of products. Right up there with macbooks. I will admit pretty much all apple products are at the bottom of the line for quality Dell is VERY close.