I bought several of dell's 2.5" hd's a while back, they were supposed to be toshibas w/16 mb cache, they ended up sending me hitachi dk23eb's with 2mb cache instead. so I was bothered, but they took so long to ship I accepted them. when one of them died in less than a year, but outside of dell's paltry 90-day warranty, the mfr (hitachi) refused to replace it, as dell is not an 'authorized distributor' of hitachi.
in addition, I've had dell try to rip me off on at least 2 separate occasions for rebates.
their prices are inflated, so 30% off usually isnt that much less than youd pay for one from an authorized distributor with a full 3 year warranty.