Softwares failures - hardly any, unless you are one that goes
about testing this and that. About all test softwares will crash
for certain machine, works fine for others, so it's no
guarantee.
Hardware failures - Heng or suay... we have very reliable Acer
laptops, not-so-reliable Acer ones. Same goes for all brands. LG is
OK.
Best value - Acer, Dell, Lenovo (not Lenovo Thinkpad, which was
previously made by IBM) , Packard Bell, some models of Compaq