Any one of the HPs should be OK. There doesn't seem to be a difference. Don't bother with the Pentium, I've heard from several sources (TSS when they were on, and a few friends) that they are worse than the AMD processors. Actually, it would be a no brainer between the two processors because one is 64-bit and one isn't as far as I know. Better to be prepared for software and OSs that use the 64-Bit architecture.
-Joe
[Edit] Just looked at the latest edition of PC World mag (
Link to PC World Mag Homepage. In their notebook section of their Top 100 list, they had no notebooks for < $1300 but all of them pretty much had Pentium Ms. Maybe its their WorldBench Testing or something else. Personally, I'd still go for one of the HPs with AMD Athlon 64 processors. [/Edit]