Office works currently have an ACER 3202 40 gig HDD cd butner/DVD player, 3 USB 2 ports etc (check out the acer site for more details) and 15.4" screen for $999 with a $100 cash back.
However it doesn't have Serial ports (I had trouble finding any new laptops with them, so I used a usb to serial converter cable NP) and only came with 256 meg of RAM. I used some of the $100 to buy another 256 and it runs like a dream ($60 for the ram).
It does everything I need it to do np including running Starry Night Pro which used to choke my old thinkpad T20 (
not surprising
)