I must be the outlyer then.

I bought a HP Pavillion Ze5500 loptop a couple of years ago. It works great except the DVD/CDROM combo drive can't burn disks or read CD-r's anymore. But then again, it has a P4 Desktop chip in it so it just generates to much heat. The drive still works, it just cooks all the disks.

My father-in-law got a compaq (now HP) desktop last year and the DVD-RW drive was busted when we opened the box. I called HP support and they sent out a new drive overnight delivery. I would deal with HP again anyday. I've had a lot of luck with them.

Toshiba on the other hand....what a pain to try to run Linux on a Toshiba Satilite.