At that price point I'd say Dell Latitude notebooks are a good bang for the buck.

I dropped about $700 on my HP a year and a half ago. Honestly, the laptop was a lemon. But HP replaced it with a brand new (one year after my purchase of "last year's model") machine which is working great and was valued at nearly $2000 at the time they sent it to me. Their support is great, so I would recommend HP to anyone. I would have been content to just have them replace the lemon with the same model in like-new condition, but they really wanted to make sure I was satisfied and would continue to buy from them (I feared I'd be saying the opposite about them based on other bad experiences with other companies). I'd definitely consider them. On another note, my wife wanted a 17", and I got her an Acer on clearance for $900 and she is very happy with it. Obviously a 17" is not in your budget, but if their smaller screens are made as well, I certainly can't say anything bad about Acer either. We have not needed tech support, so I have nothing to say about them in that regard.

Dell's support is hard to beat, i trust it entirely. I would suggest saving for an Apple though.