yeah dell have recently bad reputation coz use cheap materials... they give 3 year warranty coz its the only way to keep costumers attracted. Its like seagate 5 year for hard drives which die in first year :D
Anyways I wouldn't choose pc by brand I would choose it by model/performance/reliability... choose model/spec, read reviews, common problems and then decide....
As an example my friend has dell 15" battery died in half year, hdd in year, and the keyboard buttons got cleared in 6 months...
My 4 years old 17" hp is still like new, battery holds up to 2hours, the only thing is heat, dvd slimdrive was replaced after 2,5 year warranty, but thats normal and usually happens when writing too much, now hard drives are ticking for death, but that's mainly due to heat and again seagate :D