I had a HP until not too long ago, just got it back from the shop with fresh windows 7 and some more RAM installed, oh and also it was stuffed to the guys fixed it too since I didn't have my old CDs so I couldn't fresh install, cost around $500 and after a week my gfx card melted. My mate's HP also f-cked up, they get really hot & I find they are just sh-tty laptops in general
I'm currently running a Toshiba Satellite A660 (Discontinued for a few months now) & my first one stuffed up within about a month, even less (the NUMPAD 4 key was acting as if it was held down) and after I got that replaced I have no trouble playing most games in high quality, good sound, after a bit of tweaking it's super fast & I love it, but each to their own. My mate has the next model up (Qosimo or whatever) and his is roughly the same as mine in terms of gaming etc, I see no real differences except maybe his loads certain screens 1 second faster, which doesn't seem to matter, and the price tag (mine was about $1300 after haggling, his was around $2000 with no haggling).
Both my A660 and his Qosimo have never had HDD issues (apart from when we bump them, the HDD disconnects to protect it from damage but it doesn't really cause problems, just makes music go "dzzrrrr" for bout half a second), never have sound issues, or visual issues etc, massive resolution, decent screen size (I think they're 15.6 Inch), though his came with a bluray player whereas mine didn't since I have a bluray/dvd player & 2 ps3's so I didn't need it for the extra $600.
Some features are turbo cpu, 4xusb ports w/ 1 being a super fast/high speed or whatever it is, tv aerial input, HDMI port, SD card port, touch-buttons for volume & music controls etc, ethernet port & standard monitor port (blue plug with the screws)
Here's my specs:
System Specification---6/20/2011 10:42:16 PM
Windows Windows 7 Home Premium Edition (64-bit) Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Internet Explorer 8.0.7601.17514
Memory (RAM) 4027 MB
CPU Info Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 740 @ 1.73GHz
CPU Speed 1729.7 MHz
Sound Card Speakers (Realtek High Definiti
Display Adapters NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M | NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M | RDPDD Chained DD | RDP Encoder Mirror Driver | RDP Reflector Display Driver
Monitors 1x; Generic PnP Monitor |
Screen Resolution 1366 X 768 - 32 bit
Network Network Present
Network Adapters Virgin Mobile | Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller | Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter
CD / DVD Drives D: HL-DT-STDVDRAM GT30N | E: WJM EFG9YVGX | F: DTSOFT BDROM | I: HUAWEI Mass Storage
Ports COM15 | COM16 | COM17 | COM18 | COM19 | COM20 | COM21 | COM22 | COM23 | COM24 | COM9 | COM10 | COM11 NOT Present
Mouse 16 Button Wheel Mouse Present
Hard Disks C: 451.8GB
Hard Disks - Free C: 284.1GB
USB Controllers 2 host controllers.
Firewire (1394) Not Detected
Manufacturer TOSHIBA
Product Make Satellite A660
AC Power Status OnLine
BIOS Info AT/AT COMPATIBLE | 07/02/10 | TOSCPL - 74
Time Zone E. Australia Standard Time
Battery High
Motherboard TOSHIBA NWQAA
IP Address
MAC Address
Host Name JAKESLAPTOP