dell or lenovo
I hate desktops and their keyboards from the time I started using them...
1 year ago changed 5th laptop,not because of the failures, it was just upgrade. Had Sony Vaio, HP, Asus and Dell. A year ago purchased DELL and returned it 2 weeks later... it was "not mine" from the very beginning (keyboard, look and feel...). The next and the last was Lenovo T61 with 14". It's productive, solid, quiet, has a scratch resistant surface, comes with 3-years standard warranty and, unlike other brands, supports Linux (as a native system).
to flatulent
desktops fail more often, without doubt!
I had been working as a service center engineer for 3 years and our service room was always full of desktops. The situation with laptops was completely opposite. However, their weak point is CD/DVD drive, that fails quite often.