I would totally agree with you. I've had massive problems with both HP (three of them) and Apple (once was enough). This is the first time I've had issues with Dell. Then, again, I was previously living in either the US or the UK where they have good support.

I once bought an Acer. One month in, the mother board went. I was told it would take a month to replace because it had to be sent to their head office or something. I was relocating from the US to the UK. I asked them for my money back. After some struggle, I got it back. (Apple took three months to give me my money back for systems failure).

When I get to Ireland, I'm going to have a good look at back up plans. HP and Lenova are well establed on this side of the ocean, but HP is still trash.