Personally I am not a huge Dell fan (I'm a Thinkpad person), however they do tend to offer the best bang for your buck (the only IBM Thinkpad in the original posters size/weight range is double the price range). My mother used a Dell for work for a year or so without any problems, and my roommate hasn't had any issues with the one he got 9 months ago. With regard to Averatec, I'd never recommend buying a laptop from a company you've never heard of; Acer does make decent notebooks. IBM, Fujitsu, Panasonic, & Sony all make respectable laptops as well. I'd stay away from eMachines, Compaq/HP (although their business line models are good), Gateway. I've heard bad things about Toshiba from my campus bookstore, but haven't had any problems with them personally.
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