HN user
Article states that he and his wife landed six figure salaries, but graduated with 194k in debt. I think more crucial to how the story unfolded is that they probably didn't live below their means, probably didn't consolidate the loans to a lower rate (they were paying rates at 9%-12%), and probably didn't pay the loan off aggressively.
I wouldn't blame going to college, or college choice for poor financial sense.
How about adding a feature where you display the most often compared items in the past month/week/day. To sort of give a pulse on what's hot at this point in time.
I think it is a bit cumbersome to compare the items. Right now, it's browse -> manufacturer -> netbook -> click compare, and then you cycle that for each netbook.
A filter on the browse page to browse by predefined categories, such as screen size/price point would help as well as being able to select an item to compare from the list view, without clicking through to the details view.