I finally made my final decision and purchase what I hope will be a great laptop. I think it will be on a clevo chassis, which some of ya'll seem to be familiar with.

Here's the specs:
17" WSXGA+ LCD
2.26GHz Pen-M "Sonoma"
1Gb PC4200
100GB SATA150 5400 RPM
nVIDIA GeFORCE 7800 GTX 256MB
Sound Blaster Compatible 3D Audio
8X24X10X24 DVD/CDRW
Intel PRO/2915LAN 802.11 a/b/g
Bluetooth Wireless

All that for around 600$