Dell and Consumer Reports

I used to work next to the division that made Pavilions. As you might know, Pavilions are made from other company's parts (HP is a system integrator on Pavilions), sometimes with minor mods to the motherboard and always an HP-specific BIOS. I never used to think much of the Pavilion line before working for HP. Anyway, the division I worked for made OEM timing products and guaranteed them for 20 years so I was often in the test lab(s) and I saw Pavilions being tested for: thermal shock, vibration, at high temp, at low temp, for ESD, in high humidity, etc., etc., etc. I used to do contract work for many different manufacturers of computer components and never saw anyone else do even 10% of the testing HP did (don't know if they still do all this and they may now contract out more-all of the work). You get some weird perceptions in CompUSA, so I don't know how valid your experience there was as it relates to HP quality in general. (Many of the kids working there think Samsung is great...I've had 5 Samsung monitors fail within 30 days after the expiration of the warranty, one company I worked at sold its rejects to Samsung at Samsung's request, and as "employee-of-the-year" for Samsung, my wife received a faulty out-of-the-box camcorder. YMMV, but I avoid them like the plague.)

Sorry you didn't have good luck with HP...makes me wonder if they've changed or if you were just the "lucky" recipient of the occasional lemon all manufacturers turn out from time to time.