I just bought a laptop for college from Hewlett-Packard for that price range.
Right now they are offering free shipping on their HP Pavilion laptops which is always nice.  I went with the dv5000z series.
The specs for the laptop I bought are:
Operating System:     Genuine Windows XP Home Edition     
Processor:    AMD Turion(TM) 64 ML-37 (2.0GHz/1MB L2 Cache)    
Display Widescreen:    FREE Upgrade to 15.4" WXGA BrightView 
Graphics Card:    128MB ATI RADEON(R) XPRESS 200M w/Hypermemory(TM)    
Memory:    1.0GB DDR SDRAM (1x1024MB)       
Hard Drive:    100 GB 4200 RPM Hard Drive       
Primary CD/DVD Drive:    DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive       
Networking:    54g(TM) 802.11a/b/g WLAN       
Primary Battery:   12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
Warranty:   3-year HP Express Repair extended service plan
Here are the different HP Pavilions:
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/compare_category.do?storeName=computer_store&category=notebooks/hp_pavilion&catLevel=1