"You have to decide what you like, and I hope you are pleased with whatever you buy.
I was giving some personal preference, and I realize it is a very important investment when you buy a computer, and you want it to be the right one for you. Compaq has improved since Hewlett Packard bought out the Compaq business. HP did away with that horrible intergrated stuff."

Am glad to hear that Compaq did away with the integrated stuff.   That was always the knock on them, that their circuit board was integrated and if anything went out you had to replace the entire board at a great expense, instead of replacing a single component like other machines.

Twenty years ago I worked for a large company who had Hewlett Packard PCs.  They were pieces of junk.  The didn't run nearly as well as other manufactures machines which were sitting right beside them.  I swore I'd never own an HP.  Then a couple of years ago I wanted a faster machine than my 1.8 MHz Dell, which froze up and/or crashed frequently, for no reason at all.  I browsed a Costco business center and found a sale on their refurbished HPs and Compaqs, and bought a Compaq with an AMD chip.  Got it home and it was nothing but trouble so took it back and gritted my teeth and got an HP 3.2 MHz.  I've owned it for 2 years, and it has been completely trouble free.  It also has a separate graphic card and I use graphics a lot.  Many other manufacturers, including Dell, integrate their graphics with system memory which slows it down considerably, and also cause problems while multi-tasking.  Not one system freeze up or crash on my HP, ever!  I am now a big HP fan and don't see a single one listed in the top ten.  That's Ok. 

I'm now looking for a cheap PC so I can network it and then I'll have a PC in two different locations in my apartment and will get another HP refurbished from Costco business outlet.  (They have them on-line too.)  I'm waiting until January 30th so that it will have Vista pre-installed.  The Costco retail stores don't have computers on display, and I'm sure that they are waiting for January 30th when they will all have Vista.

I've had two Dells, and they were nothing but crash and poor support.  You make a call for support and you get someone in Bangladesh who doesn't speak very good English and can't even understand what you are saying and I couldn't understand what they were saying and it was a mess.  Dell may have improved but I'm sticking with HP.