Well I'm not sure it was every 30 seconds, but it was bad enough to make the machine useless for the one reason he bought it. And he really did narrow it down to that it was in the BIOS. 
He even tried installing OSX and Linux. Same results. So it was not Windows issue. 
And my son is way up there with computer tech stuff. He has built dozens of great systems and worked in a tech shop for a while. He took a bunch of tech courses at College. He has a degree in soldering! He's now an electrician working in Marine Instrumentation and systems on our famous Canadian Submarines that caught on fire after we bought them from the Brits. 
 
He gave the Dell to his daughter (my granddaughter)  and it's still running fine for her. 

I'm not doubting your son, I'm just shocked that Dell wouldn't settle that satisfactorily. Not even a BIOS update or anything!

I have a i5 dual core 2.30Ghz 4GB Ram not DDR running Windows 7 Is that enough muscle to run Platinum, kontact 5?  I want to be able to travel and record vocals and bring it back and dump into my main system?  If that is not enough what do you suggest I know the i7 would be ideal but trying not to spend that $$$ unless I absolutely have to

The processor won't be the issue - memory might be on that system.  If you can get it up to 8G, you will have better performance.

If I had to buy a laptop, I'd be looking at a Lenovo or ADK. The one saving grace for companies like ADK is that they optimize the whole computer, BIOS and OS, for audio work so as soon as it's out of the box, it's ready to go. You pay for that service though so if you know about computers enough to feel confident in doing the modifications yourself, then you can go with something else.

If you go with a laptop... performance wise you'll do best with a custom built laptop built around a Clevo shell.
Another advantage with a custom built (Clevo shell) laptop is that the BIOS can be customized... to expose certain parameters that are necessary to achieve super low/consistent DPC Latency.
Low/consistent DPC Latency is necessary to effectively work at low audio latency.
Off-the-shelf laptops don't expose these parameters to the end-user.

WiFi can certainly be an issue, but if a laptop happens to have WiFi that causes issues, you can do what many folks do and simply turn it off or disable it just prior to launching Sonar, then turn it back on or enable it after finishing the Sonar session.
 
I can confirm that some battery management services can sometimes cause DPC latency spikes.
 
I used a Dell laptop for 3 years of live performances twice a week and at least one practice a week on top of that, and other than disabling both battery management and WiFi services ahead of launching Sonar, it worked like a champ running Sonar.
 
+1 on 8GB or better for memory, +1 on USB 2, +1 on avoiding 'green' drives, and +1 on having capacity for or even having a 2nd disk drive.
 
Bob Bone
 

wruess
Another 2 cents worth:  Buy a laptop that is optimized for audio.  I got one from ADK computers (adkproaudio.com), but there are others.

I am waiting to talk to ADK tomorrow but this laptop has some nice features your thoughts?  http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=9673531&CatId=4935

Not terrible. Little overkill on the videocard which will likely be pretty loud.