Whatever brand you buy, someone will tell you it sucks. From personal experience Advent suck and Acer are good (aside from minor random overheating like problems). Toshiba are good in my friends eyes because she's had a laptop for a few years and it's been ok. Dell is poor because their laptops blow up. but someone else will have had a machine for 6 years and be fine.
I think you should just look at specs of an indiviual machine, duo core processor and a gig of so or ram and it should be all good.