Sturdy, powerful, good display 17" for non gamer, under $1000? Sager/Toshiba or....?

HP offers some good 17" for under 1000 bucks as well. Take a look at their DV7 series.

cheers ...

non gamer, under $1000

Even though Sony has a reputation of being on the high side pricewise, you might look at them. I just got my Sony FW 16.4", with 16:9 aspect, and they are currently offering free upgrade to a blu-ray reader drive. I doubt that you will see much if any difference between this true 16.4" and a 17" screen. Though mine was $1155 before tax, that was with a 2.4 GHZ processor, 4 GB RAM, and a 7200 rpm HDD. If you can live with 2.0 GHz, 2 or 3 GB, and 5400 rpm, you can probably get it for under $1000. It seems like it is very solidly built, though you should get some other opinions on that, as I have had it for all of 2 days now. It has an ATI integrated GPU, so no high speed gaming. I have only sampled one movie on it, not blu-ray, which looked good, but that's not lots to go on. Try to customize a system at www.sony.com -- you can price different configurations.

I just checked that

Checking the customized Sony FWs just now, it appears that their free upgrade to a blu-ray reader is now gone, so it costs $100 for that now. But without that, the low configuration of the FW prices out at $840 before tax, with 2.0 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 160GB 5400 HD. Then you have to decide if you need more, if the 16.4" format is OK, if you want blu-ray that badly, if you want their extended warranty or accidental damage coverage, which is pricy. But I would think the low-end configuration is quite capable for video and general purpose use. The other thing to consider is that in the current economic climate, it's possible that they might accept a lower offer, or maybe you could find a coupon that would help.

Sony Vaio FW

The model is a customization of their FW series, which is the 16.4". Apparently they don't have a 17" anymore -- the AW series is a giant 18.4", and 8.2 lb. I think they have to distinguish one line from another so they don't compete against themselves. I'm very happy with it for now -- this is my "mini-review" on the Sony forum:
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread227118.html

It seems fast to me, even though I haven't disabled the Vista annoyances yet. The 4 GB RAM and 7200 rpm HD must help there. I'm sure there are others here who could make a better assessment, but I would go with at least 3 GB RAM. I can't really say if the 2.4 GHZ vs 2.0 GHZ processors differ that much for your needs. I found this model at a Best Buy before I bought on-line, so I got to actually see what the screen was like (excellent), and keyboard (I like the separated keys), and touchpad (not quite so much but OK). All 3 USB ports are on the right, towards the front, so that they can interfere with right-handed mouse work. It's also noticeably lighter than my old HP 17". But because the entire unit is almost a full inch wider, side to side, it only barely fits into the bag that I used for my HP. Feel free to inbox me if you have other questions.

One thing that turned me away from Toshiba was the lack of a higher resolution screen than WXGA in this price range. One thing I didn't like about the HP dv5tse and dv6z was the shiny keyboard and touchpad (I had also seen the dv5tse at Best Buy).
As I side note, I was impressed with the staff at Best Buy -- even though I told them I was certainly buying direct from Sony or HP, they still answered my questions and were polite, even grabbing a DVD to test out the video capability. This is in contrast to the Sony Style store that I visited, where I couldn't get attention from the sales staff even though the store wasn't very busy, and when I did, the guy acted like I was distracting him from his cell call. The best help I got from Sony was the on-line chat sessions that you can have with their staff.