If you end up picking a Dell consumer level product, let me know, I can pass on a 17% Friends and Family coupon to you, this is open to any of the old time empeggers (if you have to ask, then clearly you are not an old time empegger :-)).

Personally I'd check out the Dell Business Outlet and see what you can find in the Refurb / Scratch & Dent for a Latitude. They are a better build then the consumer grade stuff. Check BensBargains for coupons, currently it has one for 25% off refurbished Latitude laptops. As always with Dell (and other OEMs) it is often cheaper to upgrade the memory via Crucial or similar, same for going with an SSD harddrive.

Yes I work at Dell, no I don't know how well these stack up against HP or Lenovo (I know plenty of folks who you could not drag their IBM ThinkPad away from them), etc, I've only gotten hands on with Dell products at this and recent jobs.