I think most of the problems you're having with the previous laptops you own have to do with the operating system, and not the computer itself. Dell computers come with extraneous programs a lot of the time (then again, all computers do...), but I always format the hard drive and reinstall the OS anyways, so I've never encountered problems that you've mentioned. Windows naturally updates on shutdown every once in a while unless you tell it not to. Lenovo if you're looking for something cheap as hell.Yeah, they're made in China and they have some flaws (for example, if you use alcohol prep pads to clean the mousepad, paint comes off...) but they're generally durable and are okay when it comes to games. HP generally has great performance, but the price is just too high.

I skimmed this so apologies if it has already been covered.

Toshiba and Asus are good, Lenovo are ok. Sony now have shitty warranty support. I've got a 3-4 year old Dell which works fine for my but I upgrade from Vista to Win7 as soon as I could which has the added benefit of removing all that bloatware laptops seem to come with.

If you want something with a graphics card get something with a graphics card, otherwise you are going to end up paying for someone else to install the thing for you, not to mention you need to check compatibility up the wazoo, it's really not worth the stress. Most PCs now work just fine with an i3/i5/i7 CPU because these chips support graphics natively. Basically unless you are planning on doing some serious gaming or cutting edge large art pieces you should be fine.

I'm an HP user. Currently using an HP netbook, which has been very reliable.......... after I wiped out Windows 7 and installed Linux Mint.