What is a good and dependable laptop?

I am looking to get a laptop, to give you an idea of what I want, I would like it to be able to run the new Starcraft 2 game and still hold it's own (somewhat) in the future. I want a 17'' or bigger screen (don't care about weight) and probably an i5 processor. I am looking between ASUS, Gateway, Toshiba, and Dell. I have a gateway desktop pentium 4 from 2002 and it is still running great, the only problem I had was with the cd writer drive (replaced) and got a bigger hard drive. So I am leaning towards them, but my friend has an ASUS (17'.3') and says it's great, my mom has a Toshiba and it works great, have heard a little bit about Dell's. What do you think is the better choice? I am looking around $1000 or so.