Sony is a popular brand, but they are proprietary so that stinks.
I would go with a Toshiba or Dell. If you choose Intel, go with PIII instead of Celuron.
I bought my gf a Toshiba Satellite, 1ghs PIII, 256RAM, 20gig, decent vid card, DVD(no CDRW though), etc, for 1100 after MIRs. I like it so much I dont let her use it
How soon do you need it? Because it might be worth your while to wait after X-mas, good deals then.