laptop for $1600 or less

Thoughts: Asus A8js is amazingly portable, great for gaming, and has awesome features with good battery life..not great, but good.
Asus A8jm, the predecesor is 200 less and offer much the same experience, except it has a slightly slower GPU and Core Duo..note Core2 Duo.
Asus F3jm was available at 1299 recently with rebates and is the 15.4 inch version of the A8jm. All have 1 gig of mem. If you had 1800, you could pray for an Asus G1.. but they're still hard to obtain.
I would strongly recommend looking at the Compal Hel80 and Asus Z96j, which are configurable at many retailers. You could easily reach 2 gigs of mem, and adjust features to fit your price. If that interests you check out XoticPc and Power Notebooks and play around. Xotic also carries many of the Asus models I mentioned and more.
Dell has great bang for buck, but if dell seems lack luster to you, there are plenty other fish in the sea. I would be cautious with IbuyPower. They have many people who gleem with joy over a cheap purchase..and then some who cuss and curse at their service and support..and laptop failures.. It's very hot and cold with them apparently. Good luck

Look at Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1546. It has Radeon X1800 256 MB on it and it costs about 1300 EUR