Hi John,
Well for £779 you can get a 16" dell XPS laptop with 4gig of ram and a 512MB ati graphics card. I am thinking about one myself at the moment actually and have been looking for a few weeks now. The Dell range seem extremely well priced for the spec. I'm looking to replace my Sony that died, and so far I've tried an Asus and an Acer laptop and both their screens were hideous to use, far too many uneven bright spots.
If you are willing to spend a little more you can get a hell of a machine from Dell whilst the sale is still on. An i7 cpu and 1GB graphics card for around £999 (350 off at the moment).
My advice would be to try to look at the machine before buying, alot of these modern screens are absolute rubbish. My friend has a Dell so luckily I have seen the screen and they are pretty good. Also consider MSI aswell as their screens are nice too.
I'd love to get another Sony but their price structure is crazy compared to everyone else but they definately have the best screens.