Build quality of Dell XPS notebooks vs. ASUS ensemble notebooks?

What's up,
Anyone have experience with both of these notebooks and care to share an opinion? For the most part I'm pretty sure I'm going to get an ASUS ensemble laptop (with integrated carbon fiber in the casing!) due to all the great reviews and the fairly small amount of gripes about these systems, but the dell xps M1210 (with an aluminum alloy casing) got a great review from abaxter, and I like that it is upgradable to 4GB (which I'm sure in the future won't be as expensive as it is now!). I'm all set on what I want system spec wise (thanks to reading all the questions in the "what notebook should I buy forum"), so sturdiness and reliability are what I am looking for.
These are both premium systems from each manufacturer so I am sure they are built to higher standards than the regular notebooks, but if anyone had opinions on each I would really appreciate it.
Thanks,
Jake

 

The 12" line from dell and the 17" line are/were made by clevo are the only lines from dell i was actually impressed with. upgradeable to 4gb? Can you find 2gb so-dimms out? No becuase they are not out. It may be upgradeable in the future. Now a question for you. Why would you need more then a gig of rma on a 12"? This is obviously not a server nor a workstation nor are you doing any 3d rendering or using any programs that will even need more then a gig page file....? Its like buying a civic that can be fitted with a hemi (if thats even possible).

 

What's up,
Thanks for the reply eddie. As an ASUS reseller saying you were impressed with the build quality of a competing notebook is saying alot. At least I know now that either laptop will be a good choice.
In reference to the ram question it's true that I probably won't ever need 4GB of ram, but judging on how long I've kept my current laptop (300 mhz with 196 MB of RAM), it's nice to know that being able to upgrade will allow my new laptop (which I will probably keep for quite a long time as I have with my old laptop) to be useable down the road when programs will possibly require even more minimum RAM requirements to run efficiently. I have no idea if this will be the case or not, but with all this future-proofing talk going around (memrom, 64 bit, etc.) it isn't a bad thing to have the ability to upgrade right?

 

Incorrect. There are 2GB sticks out but they are terribly expensive!! They cost over $1000 USD per 2GB stick. Dell offers the option with many of their XPS, Latitude, and Percision line.

 

It's around $700 or so...

Dell charges $1500 per 2gb stick