Don't buy an HP/Compaq. Two reasons:
1. They never perform as good as the hardware suggest. This has been
my observation over several years dealing with clients who buy nothing
but HP.
2. HP of late has a filthy habit of boobytrapping their notebooks to
not take generic components. My nx6125, for example, will not work with
any hard disc other than the 80GB Seagate (with HP firmware) that it
came with. Sure you can put something else in, but it simply disables
DMA making it hardly usable. This leaves you with two problems. If you
run out of space, you can't put something bigger in, and b) if your disc
dies after the warranty ran out, you're going to pay through your nose
for a new drive. I can also not replace the wireless min-PCI card.
Mine shipped with a broadcom. At the time, ndiswrapper was quite
unstable, so I put an Atheros card in that I scavanged from an AP.
Notebook wouln't even post - says something like "Unsupported PCI
device, please remove." I thought, OK, I'll buy one from HP - got an HP
branded Intel 2200 card (which was listed as compatible with my
notebook) - same story.