I have to buy it local tomorrow, so bestbuy would probably be the only place to buy from. Does anyone have any other suggestions or recommendations from the above 3?
You get 12 cell battery, bigger and faster HD, wifi N. But dell has a nice cherry case. Btw, I own 17" HP pavilion and I love it. There are minor glitches with hardware when I reboot from windows into linux. However, it might not be the case on that model.
Even though it's not one of your listed choices, my vote would go to the Acer Aspier d250 line. Here's why:
1) Great linux support -- I've installed Ubuntu netbook remix on a 16-gb SD card, it will boot off the SD, and runs like a champ
2) Keyboard is pretty good -- about the only netbook keyboard I can reliably type on (personal preference).
3) 10-hour battery life (assuming you get the 6-cell battery). Also the larger size battery makes a great carrying handle.
Now I've tried the Dell mini-9, and the keyboard has the top alpha row shoved too far to the right, making touch typing difficult. Haven't tried any of the HPs, except at the store. Keyboard felt comfortable, just couldn't get any speed / accuracy out of them.
The specific model Acer I got was the one with dual-boot WinXP/Android, and I just run Linux off the SD card. Also got Meego to boot on it too, seems to work -- still haven't played with that too much though.
Btw, I own 17" HP pavilion and I love it. There are minor glitches with hardware when I reboot from windows into linux. However, it might not be the case on that model.