We have Dells where I work, and their hard drives tend to fail. I know of at least five people whose drives failed and the company had to pay a few thousand to recover the data. This is a big reason I store all my data on our LAN, and all the code I work on is maintained in a remote CVS repository. If my HD fails, there's no need for a recovery --- just replace the thing and I'll deal.
As for HP, I bought an HP Pavilion about 4 1/2 years ago. Last year, the wireless became undependable and the AC connection was shorting out. And only six months out of warranty. Regardless, I tried getting HP to fix it. I told them I was willing to pay for it. Unfortunately, no one I spoke to at HP understood that I needed the laptop fixed. I think I was sent to six different people before I said forget it and sent the computer to a local repair shop. It's been working well ever since.
HP notebooks work well, but their service is either lacking or requires more persistence than I have.
I bought my Toshiba last year. It's definitely the best out the three. After it's first week of operation, the CPU died, but when I called Toshiba they were very good about it, and they had it back to me in about ten days. It's working fine since then.
One thing about Toshibas is that they have some proprietary Windows utilities that take some getting used to. It's like working with Toshiba's variant of Windows. It's ok, just slightly different.
One last thing, if you're relatively stationary with your notebook, consider getting one with a docking bay. I have my AC adapter and mouse plugged into the docking bay and it makes it a lot easier to just undock the computer on those rare occasions I have to go mobile.
