What is the best computer company?

None, really.

HP, Compaq & Dell Inspiron: cheap junk (even the more expensive ones are cheaply made). HP &Compaq tech support is worse than useless.

Dell Latitude and Sony: overpriced.

Alienware: This is Dell and WAY overpriced.

Acer, ASUS and Gateway: Some great bargains, some junk and some decent computers poorly made. Stay away unless you can analyze hardware (and check carefully - some of the well-made ones are dead, or have problems, out of the box.) Tech support ranges from poor to terrible..

I'm still waiting for some company to come out with a line that runs from inexpensive (save money by leaving features out, not by putting junk in the box) to top-of-the-line gaming class - but for a reasonable price. ($4,000 for what I can build for way under $2,000 isn't reasonable) - AND has level 1 tech support that's capable of more than reading to me from their computer screens, then telling me that there's nothing more they can do. (Or telling me to start disassembling an under-warranty notebook, which is the level of one off-shore tech support arm of a major US manufacturer.)

I have an HP, a Vaio and a Dell, all Desktops. The Sony and Dell are Pentium 4s and the HP is a Celeron D. The least expensive one is the Celeron HP Bought at WalMart. I am giving the Dell to my son, cause I have no use for it. The Vaio, I use for the internet, and the HP I play games with. I have benchmarked all 3 machines, the CPU of the Celeron HP mops the floors with the P4s. Funny thing is, The Pentium 4 is supposed to beat a Celeron D with half the L2 Cache. The Dell has NO temp sensors on it, you cannot use any software to monitor the temps on it, which is vital when you are trying to play extreme games. The Dell and Vaio both want to charge you by the minute the second the machine is out of warranty to get tech support or compatibility questions. If you try at any time to talk about adding GPUs or faster CPUs Sony Vaio will tell you it is against their religion. Pretty much the same with Dell. I can get ahold of HP and tell ask them about CPU compatibility and they will tell me any technical specifications I need to know about the Motherboard and what it can handle, same way for GPU upgrades, My ex wife got angry one night and Ripped the onboard video interface out of the back of the HP. HP wouldnt cover it in their warranty, however they walked me through the steps to add a GPU so that the machine is usable again. HP did not ask for any compensation for this. They even pointed me in the right direction on where to go to get a cheap Power supply for it to support the new GPU. And did not push to sell me one of theirs. Sony and Dell have both sworn that you have to have one of THEIR Power supplies or it wont work. This is not true because I Put different ones in myself to prove my point. Dell and Sony like to milk you for whatever they can get if you have a problem once the machines warranty expires. I am actually waiting on a New CPU for my HP now, HP recomended it for an upgrade, Intel P4 extreme HT. I found it on EBAY. So to sum it up, If I had the Cash and need to go out and buy a new machine, I would be looking at the HP's

Apple for Mac

Hewlett-Packard/Compaq for PC

Snapple

Alienware, by far.

You can not go wrong.

DELL