Sorry to hear about the problems - our Dell Inspiron 8000 used to have a noisy fan issue every once in a while - I used my amazing technical prowess and smacked the **** outta the fan until it stopped. Apparently, it's learned not to **** me off. Haven't had that fan issue for a long time now.
The other pain is that in order to play some pc games that won't run with the laptop video drivers, we had to get the generic nVidia patch that's not really suited to work on laptops. Every night when we turn on the laptop, it's hit or miss that the login screen (XP) will show up - otherwise, we get a black screen. We shut down, restart, and worse case, it starts up after the 3rd or 4th time (usually only the 1st or 2nd reboot brings up the login screen).
On the other hand, my Dell desktops run great and never have had any issues. My old Dell Dimension 4100 is still used for email/work/writing/etc. My Dell Dimension XPS Gen 4 that I bought last year is used for gaming and runs great.
In fact, I've bought my wife a new
Dell Dimension XPS 600 for Christmas this year. While Dell can be at times a royal pain in the ***, overall, I'm satisfied with their pc's and I like their customization capability when putting a pc together. I put the time in to do some research on finding the right pc for the best price - I always end up getting a Dell.