Those are the only 2 brands of laptops I’ve ever owned, and (personally) I wanted to throw the Toshiba in front of a bus just about every day, and it only lasted about 2 years before it just completely crapped out—it’s probably the worst piece of technology I’ve ever owned in my life, while on the other hand, I love my dell. I’ve had it about 3 years now, and it’s still doing awesome. I’ve reformatted it once, (I had to have the toshiba reformated at least 7 times), with the dell it was just to help it run a little faster as I had gotten a lot of junk on it over the years, and it’s still just like the day i bought it. I’ve bought a new charger for it, and a new DVD/CD drive after the 1st one quit working. Other than that, everything is good as new, and I love it just as much today as the day I opened the box.