There are a ton of laptops under $1000 - any core 2 duo/4gb ram/320gb HDD laptop should come in for $600 +/- $100, and they all come out of the same factories in china anyway, so pick whichever brand you like.

I use a laptop, and a netbook, and of course the n900. I like options. My netbook (acer aspire one) triple boots meego, win7 ultimate, and MacOS. Yeah... I need too many OSes.