As much as I share the general feeling for Dell & associates, I have to admit that when it comes to laptops they're not that bad. Sure, their tech support still sucks, but their products are decent.
My friend just bought a Dell XPS and I'm quite impressed with it. He paid around $1,150 for it. He got a Core 2 Duo T7200, 1GB RAM, 7400 Go and 80GB HDD (etc). That CPU beats my E6300 SuperPi time! The graphics card is mid-range, but my friend can run BF2 with no problems whatsoever. His laptop currently can do pretty much everything my new desktop can. And, of course, it's portable!