I have one for AVOID AT ALL COSTS. Never, EVER buy an HP laptop (their other stuff, like printers, is fine, just not laptops). Probably half of my friends got HP laptops for graduation, every single one of them had died within 1-2 years. I mean fully died, can't turn the thing on, hope you backed your stuff up b/c you're screwed if you didn't. Some of them were computer people or had computer people in the family, there was nothing they could do to fix it and HP didn't do anything to replace the thing.
My laptop is a Sony Vaio, and it was recommended by the people at every store I went to. I love it, it was good for the money, it has lots of space, and I haven't run into anything I can't do with it yet, plus it only weighs about 6-7 pounds. I can easily throw it in my bag and not feel weighed down by it (my last laptop was a 17 pound monstrosity, I know the weighed down feeling
). The only negative is that the model I bought is a widescreen model, so it can be hard finding laptop bags that it fits in. That problem is becoming less of an issue now that widescreens are becoming more popular.