Thanks to everyone for all the info and suggestions. The responses are all kinda telling me that I underestimated what a well-built PC laptop would set me back. I was, in fact, seeing sub-$1000 prices (with coupons and rebates some of them were WAY sub-$1000), but they were mostly P4's. Dell and others seem to be clearing out P4 laptops on the cheap. Those same discounts don't seem to be reflected in Centrino laptops, and certainly, the IBM's, Toshibas, and Sony's of the world don't seem to be playing catch-up.

Having said that, it seems like $1300 or so will get me into an HP zt1300 with 15.4" WXGA and a 1.4 GHz Centrino and 256MB RAM. That's not so bad. From distilling the comments here and reading the various reviews, it looks like this is my best bet in a laptop unless I want to sacrifice screen size to go with an Thinkpad or Toshiba. But that HP has gotten really stellar reviews on CNet, which is kinda rare considering negatives often speak louder than positives... If I go with a PC, this is probably where I'll go.

However, I peeked at the Apple refurbs again tonight, and it looks like if I just stretch out a couple hundred more, I can get a refurbished Titanium with 15" screen and about the same performance characteristics. I'm really tempted to do that now that I've realized a $1000 PC laptop is going to be crappy. If I think of it as a 3+ year investment (which I'm not used to doing with desktops) it becomes esaier to stomach the thought of plunking down more cash. I think after all this, I'm actually swinging back towards the Powerbooks.