Having a few friends with Compaq ones, i'd have to say : "never in hell ".
One of the downsides of laptops is... you cant upgrade it properly. So you've got two options: One, buy a super duper laptop, best you can find , and it will last you a few years (average 4); or you buy a really cheap one, and in 2 years or so, sell it, and buy another cheap one.
Anyway, if you're buying, you have to look at what you're expecting to do with it. If it's to do some work in Office, send some emails or browse the internet (and little more), then go for a cheepo one. It doesnt pay to buy that "top of the line" to do that.
The things that are really worth the extra money , are : the screen, a good keyboard (it matters, trust me), modem/LAN or WiFi (wireless).
Then there are the things that might be worth the extra money, depending if you have also a desktop pc , such as a DVD/CDRW combo and maybe usb2.0 and firewire ports.
For the average user, getting a ultra fast cpu, more than 256mb ram, and a stupidily expensive 3d card, and a very large hard drive, simply doesnt pay. Again, depends on what you want it to do, and good you want it
.
Lets talk CPU's. A celeron is out of the picture (a p3 is better at almost half the speed) and we're with p4 and amd. But a fast CPU means more power, and less battery life, and more heat. Which isnt good because most of the laptop's hardware is more failure prone that a normal desktop system (and be carefull with those warranties) . So it doesnt really help. And i've read a few good things about the next line in AMD mobile and Centrinos , but i'm not sure for "when".