I bought my laptop from Compaq when I came to college nearly two years ago. It's AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 1GB RAM, nVidia Go 440, 17" widescreen display, CD/DVD+R burner, 60GB hard drive, 802.11g wireless and Bluetooth built in. Came with Windows XP Pro, and at the time it cost about $2000 including accessories (extra battery, desktop media cable, etc.) and a $400 full coverage 3-year warranty. It turns out the warranty was worth the price. I accidentally dropped my laptop twice in the first year, both from a couple of feet to the floor, and I had a pretty bad spill involving orange juice, after which I had to take off most of my keys and clean them. After those incidents, I was very impressed and happy with its durability, especially after an acquaintance of mine spilled a very small amount of water on hers and the keyboard fried. Just a couple of months ago, the voltage controller on the motherboard went bad, and I had to send the computer in for repairs. I'm so glad I got that warranty! They replaced my motherboard, keyboard, and case for free, a job which otherwise would have cost over $700. And my warranty is still good for another year and a half!
The only thing that irritated me was the Indian tech support I had to deal with when I sent the laptop in for repair. Not because they're Indian per se, but because every time I called TS I had a hard time understanding what the heck they were saying to me! Other than that, I don't have any complaints about the computer I bought. I don't know how the newer, smaller Compaq models are, but mine is holding up excellently.
