The HP motherboard failure rate is an epidemic with their consumer products!
+1 to everything you've been saying. Having replaced probably hundreds of laptop motherboards over the years, I've never seen more sudden, spontenous failures than with HP stuff. They should've stuck to making their good workgroup-class printers (and not the consumer-grade, Walmart/Best Buy type junk, either).
If cost were no issue, the only model of laptop I recommend is business-class Dell Latitude hardware. Business class is more robust/durable/expandable/easier to work on, and comes with (at minimum) a three year hardware warranty, even on "scratch & dent" or "certified refurbished" hardware. Not to mention the longer product lifecycles of business-class stuff, means greater availability of spare parts. If anything breaks in any of our Dell laptops (or more often, gets broken by an employee) I just hit up Dell on the Instant Messenger, and they'll either send out a tech next-day, or send me the parts next-day. Of course I used to work for Dell, so I kinda know how to talk to them.
Additionally business-class stuff doesn't come pre-loaded with all the junk you'll find on consumer-grade hardware. Not all the demos/trials/junk software that you'll never use, because basically businesses won't put up with the same sh*t that consumers will.
Not that any of that matters to me really, I just re-image any new hardware as soon as it gets off the truck at my door, but eh. Maybe that's just me. ;-) I've never had a problem finding the correct drivers for Dell stuff on their website. IMHO their drivers are easier to locate than just about any other brand, and that includes HP, Asus, Toshiba, Sony, etc. I've worked on just about all of 'em. Sony was the worst, in my experience.
Also +1 for Start8. I use that (along with a few other tweaks) to make Windows 8/8.1 systems operate like Win 7, all day long.
