I just bought the Lenovo Ideapad y570 and it's really quite good. You can get it on sale with a coupon quite easily. I got a fairly upgraded model for 800$ which includes taxes and shipping.
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/c...EC3E976E7F7028
The one that I bought is now on sale for 749.00. It's a great computer.
Edit - Also, the computer makes a really decent gaming machine as well. There is a massive copper heatsink on one side and the laptop runs quite cool even when under heavy load. I get excellent framerates on everything I have tried so far (haven't tried crysis 2 though).