I have been using HCL laptop (P38) for the past couple of years. Never had any trouble with it. Had traveled with it all over India and USA through pretty rough conditions ... haven’t had even a single issue. It’s easy to carry, has a good battery backup, the standard screen size lets you put it into any standard backpacks and has all minute features that you’d love when you need those.
An excellent feature in my opinion is the option of turning off the screen with a shortcut key on the keyboard. At critical moments, while you have clicked the "send mail" or burning the DVD and the laptop shows low battery, this feature comes in extremely handy where you can save those extra few minutes of battery.
Probably the best part about a HCL laptop is its price. With similar configurations of RAM size, hard disk size, CPU, screen-size etc, the other brands would cost you at least 5-6 thousand more than the corresponding HCL laptops. HCL wins hands down when it comes to price.
The only downside is the after-sale service ... you may have tough time contacting their customer care service (which you may not need ever although)! I’d definitely recommend to a friend, I’ve already done to many and they are all enjoying there HCL laptops...