And historically they've been less reliable. I've had 3 Compaqs, 2 Emachines, 2 Dells, 1 HP, 1 Fujitsu and 1 Gateway. 2 out of 3 of the Compaqs crashed nonstop and turned into paperweights. I've been more than happy with every other computer I've had except one of the Emachines which had a short on the mother board 3 months after purchase. Just make sure you have an airtight warranty plan or make sure that the computer is so cheap that you can replace it. And invest in a removable hard drive so you can back up your files once a week.
Couldn't stand my Compaq's. Now I'm all Dell. Just personal experience though...sure others have experienced the opposite.
Are we talking about new P4's here? I went to Best Buy to look at them and the salesperson said they had no returns that he knew of. (E machines, many are returned) I personally don't like HP's. I've traded at a prop firm with older 900Mhz P3 Compaqs. They never crashed and booted up fine.
CPQ doesn't make good..... whether the desktops, which the wholesale stores (Costco, BJ's, etc.) try not to carry anymore, or their laptops... try www.sagernotebook.com awesome Taiwan / California operation imagine the HT P4 3.06Ghz w/ DVD/RW and UXGA 15.7" platform only Dell comes close, and Sony stopped making that model
Just bought a Dell Dimenson-8300 Pentium 4 at 2.6 Gighrz., with 800 Mghrz front-side bus, 512mb of dual-channel RAM, 64mb Nvdia graphics card, CD-RW and DVD plus floppy drive and Windows XP-Home for $773.00. All units come with a 1-year warranty, same as the new ones. Paid $118.00 for another 512mb of PC3200 RAM on Dell's Refurbished Accessory Site ( 15% off and free shipping ). Paid $133.00 for Western Digital Serial ATA "Raptor" Hard Drive that spins at 10,000 rpm and has an 8mb buffer/cache at 36 Gig. This will become my primary drive. Total Cost: $1015.00