need advice on a laptop please?

[optinox]

Hi all,

I'm thinking of buying a laptop, I wanted to buy a new one but I also considered buying a used one as long as it was no more than 1 year old, I've been pricing around and since I live in Canada, our prices may be somewhat higher than in the U.S. Anyways a local dealer has 2 used laptops for sale, there both $800 each and that's with taxes and everything, it also comes with 3 month warranty from the dealer, these are 2 he has...

Compaq Evo N620C, with
Pentium M (Centrino) 1.6GHz, 512MB Ram, 60GB HD,
DVD/CD-RW, 14.1" LCD, Good
battery, it has wirless B wifi adapter inside instead of G, Windows XP Professional with a 3 month
warranty. The Compaq actually has warranty from Compaq
until April 2007.

Averatec 3200 with an XP-M 2200+, 512MB Ram, 60GB HD, 12.1"
LCD, DVD/CD-RW, Wireless G, Windows XP Home, Good battery, 1" thick.

I'm just not sure which one to go with or if I should just buy brand new, the guy said the compaq isn't even a year old yet...and Avaratec is supposedly a fairly new company so I'm not sure how there track record is. This is kind of a dumb question but if I buy a brand name laptap/notebook does that mean I have to buy the brand name replacement parts....such as if I buy the compaq I'd have to buy a compaq mobo, ect....where as when you buy or custom build a desktop you deal with universal parts that fit into whatever tower size your using, mid tower ATX, ect...can you buy laptops/notebooks where you can replace whatever parts you want, for example right now I have an ATX mid tower case, I could put whatever mobo I want in that tower as long as it fits, so if I buy the compaq laptop or say an IBM or something like those brands would I have to buy there parts only?

[plowman]

no you can buy any other components as long as they're compatible, ie you'd need 200 pin memory instead of standard desktop 184 pin; but you could buy that memory from any manufacturer, like crucial.

[plowman]

and i fi were you i'd go for the compaq-bigger screen plus, pentium m's in my opinion are more efficient for being mobile than Athlon's mobile processors. meh- just a thought.