My experience - I have a slew of different computers.
The Dell Inspirons are C.R.A.P!!!!!
Dell and HP both make "consumer" grade and "industrial" grade systems. I've had both Dell and HP industrial grade laptops, both were pretty reliable but they are more expensive. Latitude is an example of a Dell industrial grade machine. My current daily laptop is an HP NC6220.
I've also had 2 Inspirons - both have had component failures and have issues that Dell could never solve. In Dell's defense, the issues could be Windows and not the hardware, but Dell can't solve the problems.
I have a new Toshiba NB205. Very disappointed in the performance/usefulness of that. It was the highest rated of the netbooks, if that's the best on the market stay away from those. This Toshiba is running Windows 7, but the interesting thing is that it exhibits some of the same problems as the Inspirons.
I also have a Macbook Pro. It's 2+ years old. It can run circles around any of the windows machines I have. All of these are on the same physical network, which takes the network out of the equation. I'm convinced, the Macs are worth the money.
Suggest you get a network storage drive - http://www.buffalotech.com/products/network-storage/linkstation/linkstation-live-ls-chl/ If nothing else backup your pictures/music to one these. Other option, what I do, is store all music/pictures on a network drive.