You can get an amazing deal on Dells, that's pretty much the only advantage I feel they have.
I had a Dell outlet coupon for $200 off, got an i5 2410m quad core, 8gb of ram, 7200rpm 500gb HD, (most laptops only have 5400rpm drives) and a 540M Geforce 1GB dedicated GPU for $529. SHIPPED.
If I could find the same deal on any laptop I'd get a Toshiba, but any other laptop with the same build will cost @ least $300 more. I've had my Dell for about 7 months now, no problems.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/product/B00...?tag=engtip-20