I got an e-machines m6805 2 years ago, great laptop and EXCELLENT tech support. The original owner sold the company to a bunch of people who did massive cuts in quality, bringing the company's rep straight into the toilet. He decided to buy the company back, and quality improved, as did profits. The M6805 and it's successors have been really cheap. Cheap as in price, not quality. Voodoo and Alienware, at the time, had their most high-end laptops using the exact same laptop model from Arima. The only differences were in the components put in by the each company. For example:
e-machines:
1. 1280x800 screen
2. 512mb RAM
3. 4200rpm drive (or 5400 for a few random models if you were lucky... like me )
4. ATI 9600 w/64mb VRAM (THE fastest laptop video card at the time.)
5. AMD 3000+ mobile processor
Alienware, same model by Arima
1. UXGA screen
2. 1gb RAM
3. 7200rpm drive
5. ATI 9600 w/128mb VRAM
6. AMD 3200 (or was it 3400?) mobile processor
While the higher end components obviously pushed the cost and selling price for Alienware, Alienware cost $1,100 more for the same machine.
Anyway, when I got my laptop 2 years ago, tech support was awesome. I called several times for questions about my laptop (no problems, just some info I was looking for before and after my purchase). Average waiting time was 30 seconds, the one time I had a long wait was 3 minutes, 30 seconds The techs actually knew their stuff, and were based in Texas, so I actually understood what they said, I ran into one guy with a mexican accent, but he wasn't hard to understand at all. Compare this to Dell with long waiting times (sometimes hours), Indian people you can barely understand, and "techs" who read through a manual making you go through the same bloody steps instead of answering your question. One time my father seemed to be missing a file for Microsoft Roadtrips on his CD. I called tech support to see if A) I needed a new CD that HAD the file on it, or B) What the name of the file was, and where I could find it if it was on the CD and it didn't install for some reason (you were supposed to be able to install everything onto the hard drive and not need the disk. The install didn't do this like it was supposed to, so you had to move a file over manually.). After 30 minutes of him wanting me to turn the computer on and off and wanting me to unplug it, I finally just hung up. I managed to fix the problem on my own (eventually).
I haven't used tech support since they were bought by Gateway, so I don't know how much it may have changed. I can say, though, that when Gateway bought e-machines, part of the deal REQUIRED the CEO of e-machines to become the new CEO of Gateway, so that should say something about e-machines competency under the returned, original owner.
On good weeks at Best Buy, I've seen deals for around $280 from e-machines after rebate, so it might be worth at least looking at.