Before or after the whole HP merge thing? I had a Compaq that was made after HP bought them out and it was a pretty good laptop, I had one before that, and it was awful. I had an HP, and up until I got my Macbook, I would have said it was the best laptop I ever owned. I had a Dell, and, well, I don't want to talk about it, bad memories... ;) I know a few people who have had severe overheating issues with their Dell laptops, fortunately I never had that problem, but plenty of others to make up for it.

The only laptop I ever had over heating issues with was actually my HP, but I had already owned it for about two years (which has typically been about what I get out my laptops) and was under extended warranty, so they replaced it for me and surprisingly even let me keep it. I would overheat so fast I had to use ice in a ziplock bag to keep it cool enough to get my data backed up. I finally found a nifty little external fan that plugged into the PCMCIA slot, it sucked in air, filtered it so not to suck tons of dust into your computer, and shot it in through the PCMCIA slot. Only cost me seven pounds and the thing actually worked, kept the computer from overheating.