It's a dead issue, but those new Dell Inspirons are crap. The Latitudes, even though same specs, are built better, but cost more. I love my Compaq Evo, and loved my Armada (before I stupidly sold it). I never had a Compaq desktop, so who knows.
Toshibas are good, but their Portege series seriously needs some technology updates. Same with IBM Thinkpads. They're still packing 16MB vid cards with their higher end machines! However they're pretty much 100% linux compatible.