Help me find a new Laptop.

[Rbstr]

My budget is $1000. Less is preferred, a hundred more isn't the end of the world but have a compelling argument.

Guidlines:
14.1" screen or smaller. Higher resolutions are a big plus.
SSD, or ~$150 room in the budget for putting an SSD in. I don't need more than ~100gb. 64 is probably too small.
Similarly, 4gb of ram but I could add that myself.
Graphics performance is not critical. It needs to drive a 1080p display but it's mostly just doing office work. I'll probably use it for h.264 video up to 1080p...It won't be for gaming. any SB i5 or better will work ok for that. If it has discrete graphics, nVidia is preferred for CUDA things.
CPU speed is helpful as I work with lots of data, doing regressions, math and some photo manipulation.
I place a heavy preference on build quality. Things like a metal case, slot-loading cd, ect. are highly encouraged. This is, in fact, more important than the inside bits being above my min-spec.
Touch-screens and hybrid-tablets are strongly discouraged.

Extra tid bits:
I get deals at Lenovo (here) and Dell (here).
I'm looking at the XPS13 and 14zfrom dell, the T and X series Thinkpads at Lenovo so far.
If some kind of crazy deal exists where it comes w/o Windows I can get a copy of Win7 Ultimate for $50.
A Mac could work if it fits in with the above deal. Windows is absolutely critical.

[Rbstr]

I'm going to use this thread to collect my search a bit.

I currently have an Asus...which this appears to be the great-grandson of
$618+$150(SSD)=768


Looks like a pretty good deal: $946
1600x900 resolution, 128gb SSD, discrete graphics
Looks like I'll probably order this by the end of the day, so far if still available. The resolution + SSD included is the kicker...it's almost scary cheap for those specs...

[Goku]

I'll look around, but if you go to notebookreview.com forums they have a dedicated section just for people looking for help buying laptops. They probably could find exactly what you are looking for.

Did you order yet? That Sony looks pretty good. I don't think you are probably going to find anything better.

[Rbstr]

Yeah, I ordered. To get 1600x900 in this size there are like two options that hit under budget, the other was a Lenovo. SSD wouldn't fit in with that well. Plus this gets major style points over the Thinkpads, if not durability. Going with the current version straight from Sony with the extra battery and SSD this would cost ~1500 :o
It would have been nice if it were cheaper by not having the discrete graphics, but I'm not going to complain much

I went through NB review before hand, there's a few concerns...but doesn't seem like things that'll get me. We'll see when I get it Thursday. Oh yeah, Amazon prime shipping was a big of a factor - I need to start writing a paper and I can't deal with sitting at that machine at work any more. I'll probably have to fuck around with stupid OEM partitioning and stuff before I get down to using it.

[KiddParK]

the SONY is really nice... i like how small it is actually. The thing i dislike about my ASUS, is that it is a large lappy with 17 inch screen and i seldom feel like packing it up.

that sony though, that's really nice.. looking for the battery life on it...