Granted IBM is generally a very solid brand ... I've been using Thinkpads at work for years (T20s & T30s), and they rarely have hardware trouble, but they have never possessed what I would consider cutting-edge features or capabilities.
I have minimal experience with Dell, but my wife has one for work and it is a really sweet machine ... far cooler than my T30, but she hasn't had it long enough to say much about long term reliability.
We also have an HP Pavilion zv-something-or-other laptop we bought last year ... it also is a sweet machine, but again, we haven't used it long enough to say much about long-term reliability ... although I have owned several HP Pavilion desktop machines over the past 10 years or so and have never experienced any problems with them.
If I were in your position, I would go with whatever looks coolest for the least money ... really, it all boils down to $$ when you look at it.
Addendum: you should be aware that buying IBM may be risky in that IBM has sold their entire PC-operation to a Chinese company (Lenovo). I would seriously question whether quality of support or manufacturing will remain the same as the business operations are transitioned out of IBM's hands.
I like to have the latest in gadgets whenever I buy them and I have not bought a laptop since a long time. First of all my uses on laptops would be Windows XP home, MS Office, Internet surfing, burning a few CD's and maybe watch a movie sometimes on it.
I am in the process of choosing between an IBM ThinkPad R Series Model 1842PPU and a Dell Inspiron either 6000 with the pentium M 1.5, 60 gb hard disk and 512 mb ram or a Dell 700 the small laptop with almost the same specifications.
The IBM comes with only 256 mb ram and 30 gb harddisk.
But I have heard bad reviews about Dell laptops.
Both the Dell's which comes with a higher configuration than the IBM almost cost in the same range of $1000. But IBM being a pioneer in laptops is what i think I wanna buy even though it comes with a lower configuration compared to dell at the same price.
Do you think I should buy an IBM or a Dell?

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