I'm not going by personal opinion. I've worked with Gateway and Dell and not selling them. I supported their hardware and I left there in 2001. When I say Gateway sold cheap hardware, I mean it. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff I had to deal with. Dell was decent and yes their support now sucks but everyone has outsourced anyway.
I am a admin now and I strictly deal with hp hardware. I also deal closely with the vendor and I was in Texas in September at their plant and their conference. They have the best line in servers and software to support them. Dell is cheaper and that's why many of your smaller shops and corporations go with them. I mainly deal with desktops, several types of servers, blades, and we have one of the EVA 6000 SAN. Out of hundreds of pc's we have never had one come in DOA including our servers. Also the only thing we ever replace is mainly hard drives and that is maybe two to three a year. Occasionally a motherboard on a pc too.
Each person can have their own experience with each hardware also but I like to play the odds and I've worked with all types of hardware so I feel my experience are well rounded.
Hope that helps.
For home use, I would say Dell or HP. Dell are usually cheaper.
