I've a ACER 1604, bought it in the summer: 15" screen, P4 2.8 GHz, 512 DDR SDRAM, 40GB HD, DVD-CDRWcombo, ATI 64MB graphics card.
It's a powerfull machine and it was the only one in that price range ? 1550 (DO MIND THAT PRICES IN EUROPE AND CERTAINLY BELGIUM ARE MUCH HIGHER THAN IN THE USA).
Really buy a ACER, we were on shoot in Malaysia for the Belgian version of "Survivor" and the ACERS were the only one who kept on running, the others (DELL, HP, Compaq,...) all broke down, the DELLs already after 15 minutes. I know DELL is the cheapest, but ... well you get what you pay for in this case
