I hate HP. Fucked me over my freshman year with 4 bad monitors in a row and I had to fight with supervisors every time to get it warrantied. We have HP laptops at Praxair and they’re notorious for spontaneous hard drive failures. We all back up our data constantly because it’s pretty much a given that at some point of the 3 year (I think, maybe it’s 5 year) time between upgrades you will have a total failure.
+1 for a cheap Dell. If you’re getting by with a 1.6 Athlon based system you’ll be able to swing a good step up for $400.