yea well i took Asus because of what they put in them and the way they look.
(im a designer, i should care how the thing looks

)
i have an A7T. cost me round 1250 euros.. and that was about 3/4 year ago
i think. its got a amd turion dual core 64 bits processor, 1gig of ram (2 gig
when i find compatible memory -.-), a 256mb dedicated nvidia geforce strong
videocard n 120gig harddisk. all works fine, never had trouble, its got a 17"
widescreen with nice shiny coating on it..
idk man, i can tell you that for the pricerange you lookin at, my laptop you can
buy easily. i bought it for that amount quite a while ago and the prices have
dropped again heavily, last time i checked. everything runs fine on it. i use a
lot of 3d software like Solidworks, 3D max, pro E n some graphical stuff like
photoshp, illustrator, indesign, flash etc. no problems at all. nice thing about
having a large wide screen is the ability to put your toolbars from the programs
in the sides of the screen so you still have a large working area.