I bought one as a Christmas gift about two weeks ago.
After doing a little comparison shopping, I went with the Compac 1516US from Best Buy (and, of course, had to tell them I didn’t want the extended warranty about 20 times).
The regular price was $1299 (their website has it at $1399, which apparently is wrong). At the time they had two rebates for it, one from Best Buy for $200 - which I think has ended - and one from Compac for $100.
Thus it cost me $999 plus tax, which was absolutely as much as I wanted to pay!
Salient features:
Pentium 4, 2.0 gigahertz processor
256 DDR SD-RAM memory
30 MB hard disk
DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive
14-inch screen (though I would’ve preferred a 15-inch one)
I tried it out and found that watching a DVD was a bit irritating since you had to pretty much keep your head in one position to see the screen well. Otherwise the screen washed out.
OBTW - while I wouldn’t absolutely refuse to buy a Toshiba, I still hold a grudge against them for selling machinery to the U.S.S.R, which was used to make Soviet submarines quieter (long story).