Vendors With Good Post-Purchase Support?

ivo welch asks: "I purchased two computers for which the manufacturer never offered any real new software updates. Primarily, I would have liked good BIOS upgrades, but Windows 2000 support would be nice, too. In marked contrast, DELL and SAG seem to be pretty good releasing updates for machines even 2-3 years old. What are the experiences with other vendors? The differing post-purchase support has tilted my own purchase decisions towards DELLs in the future, even though I must admit Sonys are 'sexier'. Does this matter enough to anyone else? Should we communicate this to the vendors?" Which vendors stand by their hardware years after it's been outdated and which ones drop support 5-8 months after a specific model is released, forcing their customers to adopt a short and expensive upgrade cycle if they want any kind of support?