Frys has a good selection. Definitely want to avoid Acer or Dell. I've got a 4 year old HP and the only problem with it is the battery died recently but a replacement was only $20. Also it runs slow but that's because it's 4 years old.
For under $1k I'd say this is as good as you're going to get: http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-ENVY/E2E34AV?HP-ENVY-15t-j100-Quad-Edition-Notebook-PC-ENERGY-STAR-
On the customizations you can upgrade to a hybrid hard drive, 24 GB SSD cache, 1080p screen, and 12 GB RAM and still be just under $1,000.