What laptop brands are best?

[Jackalope]

I know I can get an i7 processor for less than a grand

For what you've said you are intending on using it for, a 2nd gen Core i5 is plenty. I have two laptops, one with a dual core i5, and the other with a quad core i7, and for the vast majority of tasks, there's not a lot of difference in performance. For games, yes, but that's more due to the difference in GPU performance than CPU.

If it were me, for a non-gaming laptop, I'd spend some extra on battery life before the i7 over the i5. For gaming, I'd go for a better GPU first, and make the i5/i7 decision based on whether it would fit in the budget.