Honestly, when I was about to buy mine I priced it out with Dell, HP, and, Gateway.
All of them came to like 1600 bucks.
Went to walmart, picked up a laptop for 790 bucks with a warrenty that was the same performance of what I priced out. It was a toshiba, I absolutely love it. I threw linux on it and now its indestructable. The good thing about walmart is, they will take ANY return so if yours messes up, take it back!
Or, if you are more computer savvy... Check out Sagar laptops. They are the company that makes laptops for Dell, HP, Toshiba... yes all of them. Then they get logos stamped on them. However, SAGAR are the people that make them first. You can save alot of money if you get a SAGAR and put your own software on.
My buddy is a computer nerd/genius and his Sagar laptop should have been about 3.5 grand from anywhere else. He built it himself with help from Sagar for like 1550.