Okay guys, here's some empircal numbers for you to look at:
"Squaretrade is a company which sells third party warranties. Their relationship to the laptop industry is like a car insurance company’s relationship to the auto industry. Squaretrade has an interest in laptops becoming more reliable because it means they have to pay out less often. The report takes failure data from a sample of over 30,000 laptops which Squaretrade’s customers have warrantied.
Overall, 20 percent of laptops fail after three years of use. When broken down into years, we can see that the first year – the only year most manufacturers cover – has an only 4.7 percent chance of seeing a malfunction. By the second year the chance of failure has climbed to 12.7 percent.
If accidents are taken into account, the chance of failure increases to 31% over a three year period. Squaretrade includes this figure not to comment on manufacturers, but rather to comment on the fact that laptops are placed into a naturally more difficult environment than most consumer electronics, which sit in one place in the home and are unlikely to be knocked over or otherwise destroyed.
Still, the chance of laptop failure is much higher than with most consumer electronics. The chance of an HDTV failing, for example is generally less than 10% even after three years of use. There is essentially a 1 in 3 chance that any laptop you purchase will not still be working three years down the road."
So yes, I admit, the OP has a point when he says that HP sucks! HP likely cheaps out on manufacturing and goes with the lowest bidder from the ODM builders. Netbooks usually are in this catagory also.