You are paying for a name. Alienware is sh**. Seriously. They don't really use anything anyone else doesn't besides their fancy little cases. Plus, the battery life will probably be crap.
01001010 helped me out in my laptop thread a few weeks ago, and though I didn't choose any he found, his suggestions were still great.
I got a Sony Vaio FW-490. You can find it on their site. I customized it to this:
16.4" widescreen with XBRITE-FullHDâ„¢ LCD technology (1920x1080)
320GB SATA Hard Disk Drive [7200 rpm]
Large Capacity Battery
WLAN (802.11a/b/g/n) with integrated Bluetooth® technology
ATI Mobility Radeonâ„¢ HD4650
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8700 (2.53GHz)
CD/DVD playback/burning
Black
Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-bit
2GB DDR2-SDRAM (DDR2-800, 1GBx2)
And I grabbed a 4GB RAM kit on the 'Egg for cheap. It came out about the same to upgrade the HDD to a 7200RPM on Sony's site, so I just did that..I didn't need an extra 120GB 2.5" drive laying around that I had no use for...I of course also got the larger battery since I thought it would be nice.
The total came to $1,069.13. (not including tax) Not bad for what I'm getting. My actual total was a lot more because I got a deal on a 2 year warranty with accidental damage handling cuz my mom wanted me to get it
. So if you ordered 2 accessories and a warranty, you got $150 off, which was a really good deal. I think that deal is still going on.