I’ve actually had good experiences with Dell, in my experience at least the best, just complaining of a minor uneven core temp issue (worked to spec) they replaced my refurb 1080P 7567 ($700) with a $1,
300 7577 4K and maxed out specs.
They also had no problem warranty wise with the fact I had upgraded my laptop’s WiFi card and NVME SSD, they returned the upgraded parts to me along with the new laptop (2 Day shipping).
Plus almost every part is pretty easy to replace should anything go wrong post warranty,
they provide service manuals and disassembly guides. Their corporate support is actually excellent as well. I mean the 7 series Latitudes come with default 3 years in home service if remote diagnostics are not fruitful.
Medtronic, a huge medical device maker for one uses Dell happily, my father, even brings many of the older Latitudes/Precisions for various work related database testing, they’re pretty well build never seen them fail as of yet even the heavily abused ones. Not sure what company you for in IT but our experiences have usually been pretty great, corporate and regular support has been excellent.
As for most “IT” service/support guys who do a lot of the basic stuff at least, ie imaging and hardware upgrades, I’ve found them to be not very knowledgeable about hardware or software in most of my encounters. I’m speaking about simple things like tweaking advanced WiFi driver settings to fix connectivity issues on certain adapters... Hopefully it’s better at your workplace.
HP however, I agree has terrible support. Yet in some places IT staff recommend them for being “reliable” for some damn reason even though they’re always the ones having issues.
When I do buy a MacBook this year though for personal use, I will definitely buy extended warranty because unlike Dell’s Latitudes and Precisions, it would be an expensive proposition to replace/repair most things outside warranty.
