Look into the HP Pavillion Dv9000 Series. Really robust laptops. Some of the higher end models from that series boast 2 gigs of DDR3 ram and have some pretty quick Dual Core Turion processors.
One model in particular has 4 gigs of ram, dual 120GB Sata hard drives, a 7600 series Nvidia GPU and a dual core 2.3 GHZ CPU all in a pretty attractive looking package. The screen on them is amazing. Especially the 17" widescreen models. Really deep color and nice smooth scratch resistant polycarbonate protector. The body on these laptops are poly-carbon fiber and are quite light too.. as well as scratch resistant.
For shits and giggles they have an integrated webcam, bluetooth (most models), firewire, expresscard, multi format card reader and the media and control buttons are touch sensitive with a nice soft blue backlight. There's a cool remote that comes with it too to take advantage of Windows Media Center if that kind of stuff floats your boat.