I am considering buying my first laptop but I am a bit bewildered by all
the brands and choices out there. By now I was able to narrow it down
to a 14" or 15" HP Pavilion brand, probably with AMD Turion 64 X2 dual
core CPU, in the $900 to $1,100 range with 2 GB memory. A few of the
spec details, however, that I am interested in, are not spelled out on
HP's Web site, so I wonder if some of you HP notebook owners with
current models could fill the gap for me.

Do these notebooks have a BIOS that allows booting from a USB thumb
drive?

Does the User Manual list all the CD formats the optical drive can read
and write? The specs usually just mention the DVD options. I am
specifically interested in models that can read and write CD+G (Karaoke)
format. I assume that if one particular HP model can do that format than
probably others might as well, as the probably use the same drives in
most of their laptops.

Lastly, who provides Windows updates, HP or Microsoft? It used to be
that one needed to get OS updates from the vendor on pre-loaded systems.
That, unfortunately, also meant being left behind from the most current
MS updates.

Thanks for any help you can give me on these issues.

Rudy