I had a Packard Bell and it wasn't great.

Bought a Dell that came when it said it would and has been entirely faultless. Their factory is in Ireland, and they've just opened a call centre in Scotland but I think that is for tech support.

Until hearing your problems I've never heard a bad word about them - I'm even still using an old 486 laptop that work were going to throw out, but is more than adequate for me on Word, Excel and internet.