If the school makes a recommendation, it usually is a good idea to give a lot of weight to what they say you should get. I'm not terribly impressed with HP, especially since the merge/mangle with Compaq; but it will be critical that a student laptop be 100% compatible with the school network.

If the Prof/Dean who manages the net happens to use and like something weird, everybody needs to live with the weird. Many university networks rely on "homebrew" programs that may be written by the prof in charge of a class, and some of these "interfaces" can have peculiar compatibility problems. It's probably less common at larger universities; but it still happens that an individual class requires you to conform to the prof - not to universally accepted cross-platform IT practices.

Mac laptops are good, but it is ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE that they're "invulnerable to viruses." They're less bothered since they're not prevalent enough¹ to be very interesting to virus creators; but the patches MAC has issued covertly and without publicity are almost exactly the same in kind as ones Windows machines have been installing for years. It is also "not quite true" that documents can be ported back and forth 100% between Mac and Win machines. There are a few differences between the Windows fonts and Mac same-named fonts that can produce individual character dropouts, and there are some formatting devices used in wordprocessors for both that DO NOT transport well. Compatibility is good, but 100% is little too much to claim.

¹ There's also the tendency for Mac users to be professionals who don't do "student type" file downloads and internet yakfests, so a fairly large percentage of Macs have been less exposed to virus attacks, leaving a very small pool of "vulnerable" Mac users - not worth the bother except to a fellow student with a Mac.

The AMD laptop processors have had a power level advantage over recent Intel ones, but the newest laptop versions of the Core 2 Duo chip may have reversed that. Intel Centrino gives one of the most recent Intel brags.

While 64-bit processing is - maybe - the coming thing, it's unlikely that a laptop purchased now or in the next few months will benefit from it now or will last long enough ever to make much use of it. Both WinXP and Vista 64-bit versions, and the programs available for them, lack features that will be a benefit for most users, and are considered suitable only for servers. Available 64-bit software is "stripped" of user features in order to emphasize server performance. A good multi-processor (Core 2 etc.) machine probably is a better choice for a new student; but if you're really concerned about this, I'd say ask the university before you allow it to make a big impact on your decision.

A fairly recent market survey reported that HP, Dell and Toshiba are NOT the leading laptop makers, but are the leading laptop sellers. All available laptops are actually made by a small group of "ODM" (Original Device Manufacturer?) makers who paste the sellers' logos on. Any seller can change ODM suppliers, for a new model or within the run of an existing one. It is thus nearly impossible to tell who built the one you buy, and any two competing OEM products may actually be made by the same ODM builder. The support provided by an OEM seller can be important, but can vary a lot with where you're located and what means of contact are available.

John