The company where I work with IT-Support we only have HP, and I would have to say that I find them very reliable. As long as you go for the business models at least, because thats the only models we use. We have about 10000+ notebook users and not a lot of cases of broken down laptops due to hardware issues, more so because of users messing up the system, which is quickly fixed with a clean cloning of their harddrive ;)
Take a look at something like their 8510p model, which is the most used model at my company.
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/321957-321957-64295-321838-3329741-3355678.html
They start out at about $1600 so they should be within your budget, and they are execelent desktop replacements with decent gfx cards, good keyboard with a nice feel to it.
Take a look at something like their 8510p model, which is the most used model at my company.
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/321957-321957-64295-321838-3329741-3355678.html
They start out at about $1600 so they should be within your budget, and they are execelent desktop replacements with decent gfx cards, good keyboard with a nice feel to it.