Hi
Rather late comment from me here :-|
I also own the Compaq C502US and am very pleased with it. I did get 512 MB extra RAM locally for $62 and installed it before I even started the computer up for the first time. If at all possible, I would get just this one upgrade. The only other issue for me is that the C502US does use the battery up a little faster (that nice display is part of that!), but I usually keep it plugged in to wherever I take it.
As for Vista Home Basic, which came preinstalled, I actually prefer Basic over the higher versions as it runs better IMHO without all the extra stuff/junque, and it's the best fit for this laptop. In general though, on more graphics capable PCs, if I was *paying* for an upgrade from XP, I'd probably go up one step to Premium. But I think Basic is best here.
So, my recommendations would be:
-Get another 512MB of RAM for $55-65...faster, easier on hard drive and helps media playback
-Get a free anti-virus prog (it already has Windows Defender for adware/spyware), such as AVG
-Windows Updates
-Compaq updates at
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=2093&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&tool=softwareCategory&query=C502US&product=3340111#
Other than that, hope the computer is working out great :-)
In regard to malware protection, Windows Defender isn't perfect and I also use Ad-Aware (manual scan), SpyBot (immunize and manual scan), and SpywareBlaster (immunize). None of them run in the background, but they do require manually updating and scanning (unlike Defender) so can be annoying to work with these for general users.
Of course, running Firefox instead of IE (even 7.0) does wonders here.