I can't say that I'd recommend Dell. I had a hell of a time trying to order some Dell Mini 9's where they simply failed to fulfill the order and never bothered to tell us why we never got anything. (We canceled the order, went to a local store, and bought HP netbooks instead.)

I certainly can recommend going with some sort of high-volume integrator. That doesn't necessarily have to be Dell. It could be GamePC or Apple or anybody else. Just find somebody who does enough volume that they'll have some hope of knowing that a given batch of {RAM, disk, etc.} is busted and will have that issue sorted out before you ever make your order.