One in four small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe and the US will replace their PC ‘estate’ during 2006.

Drawing on the views of 700 SMEs, a recent survey by IT analyst group Forrester Research found that Dell remains the preferred choice of supplier with almost two-thirds of companies favouring the Texas-based company over the other most popular choices, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Lenovo and Toshiba.

Dell is also the SME’s hottest laptop brand. Just over half of all respondents to the survey cited Dell as their primary laptop supplier.

The results also indicate that smaller companies are investing more in laptops. Respondents claim that 28% of their PC purchases in 2006 will be laptops, an increase of 3%.

Unsurprisingly, 82% of SMEs have either started, or completed, migration to Microsoft Windows XP. However, nearly 40% of respondents still have Windows 2000 running on some of their PCs, and 16% are still using Windows 98/Millennium Edition. In addition, 27% of SMEs surveyed plan to adopt Linux in the next two years, while 23% plan to adopt Mac OS X.

According to the report, about half of SMEs still use resellers, distributors and retailers to purchase PCs, although – as the popularity of Dell might confirm – there is an increasing tendency to purchase hardware directly from the supplier.