don't ever buy HP computers

Ive used my Apple 17" PowerBook every day since they first came out (we have a Rev A machine). It's about 6 years old at this point. I'm not a war correspondent or anything but it gets used in a variety of locations in the house and its made several cross-country trips. It was in use as a back-seat DVD entertainment system during a rear-ender that totalled the car we were driving in, and never missed a beat.

It's suffered a hard drive failure (I replaced it myself) and it's had one replacement battery. The latch is a little weak and sometimes only one side engages. Other than that it works flawlessly.

While I am certain there are many laptops that last for many years, you cannot deny that they are in general a lot less long lived than desktops.

Heck, I have a Mac SE (what was that 1986?!) that work perfectly! I am sure if I still had my Apple ][+ it would work fine also.

mad_machine wrote: define malevolent company

I think it's pretty straightforward

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:malevolent&ei=VqWZSeSANtmImQfI9uSPCg&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title

My first computer was a P/B, now there's crap. My current computer is a "tower" H/P with the old P/B monitor. My experiences at work with laptops, SPECIFICALLY the mouses/mice? have made me leery of buying them. But then, I may be especially hard on a mouse, as I am on the 4th one.

I really liked my Itronix GoBook. Damn near indestructible. The backlight screen finally went out after an 8-10ft fall onto pavement, an easy fix but I've been lazy. The touchscreen was pretty slick too. It's too slow for most stuff, but it will run tuning software easily, and that is probably what it will be resurrected for.

My DD is an Acer 5100, which has treated me well for a couple years now. It goes everywhere. I even tote it around in my backpack when I road trip the motorcycle.

I just bought a Power Spec Quad Core Pentium machine from Micro Center to replace my dying Alienware Pentium 4. This thing does video editing on Adobe Premiere without crashing all for a little less than $800. Good quality components without all the crapware that HP and Compaq put on their machines for less money.