My main desktop is (I think) about 18 months old. It's a really deluxe HP with 2 HD's in RAID 0 array. This was the first computer that I didn't 'step down' to save money. I bought the most computer that I could afford at the time and I have no regrets. But it is starting to show it's age now. I will probably need to replace it in another 6 months. Hopefully Vista will be mature by then.

My laptop is around 9 months old... another HP. I am officially and HP fan now. It's a nice little laptop used mostly for travel and video encoding. It's nearly as fast at encoding video as my desktop.

The third computer is my partner's. It's about 2 years old and was kind of a budget buy Sony desktop. My partner is much less demanding of his computer than I am. It's a nice backup to use for video encoding as well but nothing special.

I've really become fond of HP the past 2 years. They don't seem to be as afraid of the cutting edge as Sony, Dell and Gateway.

Btw, my sister who has a computer programming degree, bought a Gateway last year. It was built and shipped to her and immediately it malfunctioned and refused to burn discs. She tried to fix it (bad drivers) but failed. She returned it for repair. It was returned to her still malfunctioning. I tried to fix it but failed. She went round and round with Gateway until eventually she just threw it away and bought a Sony.