I favor Dell as well. I have also heard and experienced mostly all good things about purchasing a refurb or "dented" unit from them as well. A few months ago I purchased a Insperion that was returned. (only owned 28 days) Might of been returned because of eshtetics (red color) It has a Sandy Bridge i5, with 4 or 6 mg ram, 1 TB hard drive, windows 7. Bought to use as a HTPC for recording TV shows, so it has limited use, but so far so good. Paid $399 for it.
I understand their business line of computers, which you can see the names listed under "business" use are superior and last the longest. I also just purchased a new XPS laptop from them, but it was over $1,000 (around $1,300) It's the newer sandy bridge i7 processor, and has one of the best screens put out now on laptops, but you pay for it. But I love a good quality screen. Their lower resolution screens on their laptops are awful. With a desktop, you can buy a good 1080 screen separately, so that's a mute point. If your into gaming as well as other stuff, then the XPS would probably be a better choice than the business line.
On the refurbs (depending on price) don't be afraid of a unit cause it has a smaller hard drive then you wanted or not as many Gig of ram you wanted. Installing additional ram and adding a second hard drive is a piece of cake, and they are cheap to buy. A 1 TB hard drive runs around $69 and ram is dirt cheap now. But if the price and the processor and upgrade ability is right, don't hesitate on doing your own upgrading on these simple solutions.
I'm a woman, and although fairly computer literate, I have never ventured into the actual "inside" of the computer myself when I needed to upgrade something, but recently I did, and was surprised at how easy it was. I watched a couple of YouTube video's on adding a new hard drive and did it without a hitch. I was so proud of myself. I strutted around the house like a grey haired 70 year old Peacock, in front of my 30 yr. old son bellowing out "Who's the Champ?"
As I am sure you understand, if multimedia is important to you, your video and sound card is of extreme importance, as well as processor speed.
There are discounts for their new units, as well as the refurbs. The refurbs come and go quickly. Especially for anything newer. What I discovered from a poster on another board too, is that often times if you talk with a rep. who handles the refurbs, you will find that they have inventory not yet listed on their site. They will ask you what you are looking for, you tell them, and they look at a list of units they have coming up. Good way to beat the crowd. Now I've let everyone know......... What have I done.
Make sure you get your hands on all the discount coupons before you go shopping. You can find them on many different sites like
Cheap Laptops, Laptop Deals, Discount Laptop Sales
Then go to top of page where it says coupons and click on Dell.
Notebook Review always lists Dells coupons as soon as they are posted, and SlickDeals has a tab at the top you can find the current discounts.
If you just go to their web site without any coupon codes, you will be over paying in most cases. Also, if you can wait until January you will see an immediate price drop. Hope this helps.