What are your needs?

You'd probably be able to get a good Sager. To be honest, they are probably the best quality I've used/seen/heard about.

They pretty much just use Asus cases and put their own stuff in there. I forget what panels they use, but I haven't seen anything wrong with them.

If you are just going to doing the most basic of basic stuff (like internet, emails, im, office, even some photoshop) then you don't need anything spectacular. You could seriously just go for Dell (just make sure they don't try to sell you a bunch of extra crap, and opt for Windows XP instead of Vista).

My sister just recently bought a simply notebook from Dell and it runs absolutely fine. I had a look over it and apart from the crap they install for you, it's very decent quality.

Though, check out Sager if you can. Here's a good place to buy them from:
Custom Laptops by PowerNotebooks.com™ - Discount Custom Notebooks & Cheap Laptop Computers

By the way, please don't go for some over-expensive piece of crap like Voodoo or Alienware. You will be wasting your money, especially with what you want to do.

If you want to do a bit more research, check this out (helped me heaps):
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