Hubby's HP from work is not so spiffy either. He lost his screen.
All the color and icons/graphics. It was 2 months before warranty expiration, so work had a HP tech come in and fix it.
His battery is totally gone, as of last year after one year of use!
And work won't replace it.

But his friends have had all sorts of mechanical problems too.
Keys breaking, CD drive dying, etc.

My Dell inspiron fried the HD, but we replaced it. (son did it).
The rest still works fine. Over 4 yrs old. We keep two backups going all the time now. (one down here on my desktop and one for the laptops upstairs!)

I find myself using this desktop mostly. We replaced the Dell HD here too, BEFORE it died. My son didn't like it, said it sounded funny, so we put in a new one. Dell seems to have Hard Drive issues! I don't go many places online anymore.. being very conservative.