I work for a state government agency (where the skill level ranges from very-entry level to superb)..
We've had HP's, Dell's, Gateways, and others..
Our current desktop machines (~2000) are a mix of Dell's and Gateway.
Servers are almost exclusively Dell's. We've stuck with Dell servers, because thier quality and support (especially support.. GOLD support) has been great.
On the desktop side, Dell used to be pretty good, but has seemed to go down hill in the past year or 18 months.. We're supposed to go directly to level 2 support, to avoid to the brain-dead-database-reading-monkeys.. but that doesn't happen anymore.. takes an hour just to get a CD drive replaced.
Gateway isn't as good as Dell *USED* to be, but they are pretty consistant.. They do go thru some of the asnine questions when trying to get stuff replaced.. but its still pretty fast.
One thing to consider is if you are getting on-site tech support.. talk to companies near you.. Most of the big companies contract out for on-site service (i.e. Unisys, etc).. and sometimes they just suck.. Either they'll never make service calls in the time window given, or they'll come ill-prepared with parts, etc.. YMMV, as even in my agency, it varies highly depening on where in the state the service is occuring.
As for the quality of the computer itself.. its all the same stuff anyways.. same chipset motherboards.. same hard OEM hard drives, etc..
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I work for a state government agency (where the skill level ranges from very-entry level to superb).. We've had HP's, Dell's, Gateways, and others.. Our current desktop machines (~2000) are a mix of Dell's and Gateway. Servers are almost exclusively Dell's. We've stuck with Dell servers, because thier quality and support (especially support.. GOLD support) has been great. On the desktop side, Dell used to be pretty good, but has seemed to go down hill in the past year or 18 months.. We're supposed to go directly to level 2 support, to avoid to the brain-dead-database-reading-monkeys.. but that doesn't happen anymore.. takes an hour just to get a CD drive replaced. Gateway isn't as good as Dell *USED* to be, but they are pretty consistant.. They do go thru some of the asnine questions when trying to get stuff replaced.. but its still pretty fast. One thing to consider is if you are getting on-site tech support.. talk to companies near you.. Most of the big companies contract out for on-site service (i.e. Unisys, etc).. and sometimes they just suck.. Either they'll never make service calls in the time window given, or they'll come ill-prepared with parts, etc.. YMMV, as even in my agency, it varies highly depening on where in the state the service is occuring. As for the quality of the computer itself.. its all the same stuff anyways.. same chipset motherboards.. same hard OEM hard drives, etc..