We purchased an HP DV6449US from Circuit City 2 years ago. It was an early Vista model, with an AMD dual core processor and 2 MB of RAM, etc. The machine was returned to HP twice in the first year and a half, and gave intermittent service after the returns. WiFi and screen behavior were always "iffy", even after repair. To HP's credit, they have always given good service and support. Unfortunately, college kids need reliable hardware. It's hard for them to package up a laptop and send it back for repairs with finals two weeks away.

The computer was dead when my son returned from Christmas vacation this year. My son had shutdown and unplugged the computer before leaving. According to him, the computer was on his study desk, not connected to anything. It simply would not boot after attaching the power supply and allowing the battery to charge. This was not fun for me, as I spent an awful lot of time trying to get Best Buy to let me purchase a computer for my son and allow him to pick it up from the store.  Best Buy is very inflexible with respect to long distance purchases.  I will probably try to work with Walmart or Amazon if this ever happens again.

To HP support, my hat is off to you. To HP marketing and sales, I will probably not buy another "cheaply manufactured consumer" HP product. My experience with my son's laptop has just been miserable.  We did not purchase an HP laptop the second time around.  We use HP at the office, but we generally buy off of HP's business web page.

Note: We've also noticed that there is usually no need to buy an extended service agreement.  The agreements generally do not kick in if the item is under warranty.  We won't be wasting any money on service agreements in the future.