This weekend I purchased a

This weekend I purchased a new HP Pavilion zv6203cl PC laptop. It uses an AMD 64 Athlon 2Ghz CPU, with 80G HD, 1G RAM, running Microsoft XP Home. Great little machine. Beautiful screen. Problem is that it would not connect to a Linksys wireless router. It would connect a Apple Express wireless router. Go figure. The second problem was that Microsoft SQL Express would not install either as a stand-alone or with Visual Studio 2005. The was the straw that broke the proverbial camels back. So I returned the computer and purchased an HP Pavilion zd8000 with a Pentium4 3Ghz CPU, 100G HD, and 2G RAM, running Microsoft XP Home. Experienced the same problems. So back it went. I am really disappointed cause the zd8000 is a beautiful machine.

Saturday, I stopped by CompUSA, to look at a laptops. Found a nice Compaq running Microsoft XP Home. It has a AMD 64 Athlon 1.6 Ghz CPU, with 60G HD, 512M RAM. It was connected to the internet so I downloaded SQL Express and .NET 2.0 redistribution kit, installed both, and found everything work. Now why did it work on the Compaq and not the HP. Now that HP owns Compaq you would not expect much difference. Verified that CompUSA had six in stock … just wanted to think about it first. Not sure but may go back and purchase it tomorrow. My only reservation is their return policy. They will not return your money only in store credit. Not a good policy. The first two I purchase from Sam’s Club which has a 6 month return policy. My plan is to contact HP and see what they have to say about my problems.