I recomend Acer or Asus.
I have Acer Aspire 9520 which is very good with 17 screen and nvidia 7900 Gs and 1,73 ghz dual core.
Plays well all games,Mass Effect lags a little.

I know it sounds obvious, but if you want a long lasting laptop get the best processor you can. After two years mine is unbearably slow at times

I have Vista and don't have that many problems with it. Why does everyone dis it so much.

For less thank 1k it would be hard to get a good laptop and it will stop playing new games real soon, but since you have set your mind I have found a way to cheat Dell's discount system.

When you click on a model they will probably present you with 2 or 3 pre-"built" laptops. The higher the cost the bigger the rebate. Select the most expensive one then remove what you don't want. That way you still get to keep the most expensive version's discount while having a completely different build. Saved me 500 on my laptop and it was the sole reason I chose a Dell.

NO! NO, Toshiba IS NOT good at making laptops. I bought one and it croaked the third year of owning it. Their laptops degrade so fast (in hardware as well). I had bought a Toshiba Qosmio, and when I wanted to go and update the drivers for it on their website, the model I had just bought was discontinued the year before my purchase. Toshiba laptops also use a shit load of power just to process the tiniest things. Hewlett Packard is MUCH BETTER with their laptops. I'm on my second HP laptop, because my first HP laptop got destroyed in a car wreck I was in around the end of June. Plus HP brand computers always get good firmware updates and such, and I rely on them more.

If you buy a macbook now, you get a free $300 iPod touch. I would suggest buying the bare minimum 13.3" macbook and doing the upgrades yourself.

If you do not care for Mac OS X, you can always install Linux or Windows on it.