I'm voting for Asus. My laptop is an Asus A6712U/LH - Sempron 3000+, 512MB RAM, 60GB HDD, 15.4" widescreen, DVD-Rw, currently £549. Been absolutely top notch so far, no problems at all and doesn't overheat to stupidly high temperatures like my girlfriend's Toshiba with Pentium 4 (90C at times) - my Sempron sits stably at about 48. If you're going to want to watch DVDs, you can't beat a widescreen. Generally I'd recommend Asus though - it just has a feeling of quality to it.