Bob, I've been very pleased with my Asus laptop. Very fast, runs cool, no problems. And it was a refurbished model from Tiger direct. I would have bought new, but the model I wanted was no longer available. The refurbished one was around $600. Note also that a recent Asus laptop was highly rated in the last issue of Consumer Reports. Don't have the issue in front of me, but I'll look it up if you're interested.
I grew to hate my stupid old HP laptop. It ran hot, was slow, and the hard drive failed after 18 months. I'd never buy another hp product.
Cheers,
Alan