Regarding "bang for your buck" Dell's are still the best bargain for compute power. Many people (rightly so) piss all over them for bad customer support, but if you buy from the "small business" side of the site instead of the "consumer/residential" side of the site, then you get small biz customer support bundled, which anecdotally is much better.
Yeah, you can get a great Dell for really cheap. They now come preinstalled with Ubuntu (http://dell.com/ubuntu), so you don't have to pay for Windoze.
I got one of those, and have really liked it. It's not going to ever get lots of looks, but I use it for programming, not showing off.
Also, in the one occasion when I needed customer service, it was really good. I bought it in the US, but called up the support line in Germany, and had a new hard drive here in Innsbruck, Austria the next day. I was pleasantly surprised: I thought I would get hassled because of the change of country, or they would be slow, or see that I had bought it with Ubuntu and give me grief for that, but they really didn't ask any questions, just sent a guy over with a new drive.
The specs on the newer vostro line of Dell laptops are pretty impressive for the price. Best value in my opinion. Dual core processors, 2GB RAM, separate 256MB video, choice of screen sizes/weights, DVD+/-RW, built in camera, 160Gb+ HDD, choice of OS and that's starting at around $700 new.
They're not pretty, but they are highly functional, don't suffer from the quality issues Dell had circa 2002 - 2006, and if something breaks or you need a peripheral of some sort, you won't be in hock to Apple for half the cost of the machine or more.
I was just shopping today and found that a Lenovo T series can be had for about the same price (within $100, to one side or the other depending on specs) as a comparable Dell Latitude, and the Latitudes don't seem to be available with Linux (only three models can be had with Linux). I'm using a Dell at the moment, and historically the price has always convinced me...but it seems like you can pretty much get a comparable Lenovo for about the same price as a Dell. (And Lenovo also offers occasional coupon codes that keep them pretty competitive even if Dell offers slightly bigger special deals on occasion.)
