Have you considered looking at factory certified refurbished laptops? For example, the Dell Outlet has stuff for cheaper, but with the same warranty as new.

I went a slightly different route and got a used laptop off EBay. It was one of those resellers who buy up used top notch equipment from companies, wipe the hard drives, reinstall the OS, and then sell them on EBay with a limited warranty. It's been fantastic. Perfect for my needs and cheap.

I've never gotten refurbished stuff from them, but I can attest that Dell's warranty service is very good. They send parts overnight, sometimes without even questioning whether they're really broken, and if you can't install them yourself they send a guy to you. (It's true we do live in Dell's home headquarters, but I'm pretty sure that's a national thing and they just contract that stuff out to whoever's local.) So far on my laptop I've replaced a keyboard that only failed because I type on it too violently, and a motherboard that started going spotty after 4 years of heavy use. I have to make this one last forever because I do not want a machine with Windows 7 on it.