I bought an HP a1730n just over a year ago.  It was great at first.  ONE day after the  one year warranty expired, it completely crashed.  The hard drive and motherboard had to be replaced.  HP pre-loads and locks down the operating system to prevent theft or something, so the recovery disks made with the original don't work on the new hard drive.  They sent me replacement disks at my cost and those didn't work either.  After several frustrating calls to HP, they assured me they would send the correct disks (overnight delivery which was going to take 3 days - figure that one out!). ...