I would head over to Cnet and read some reviews. Then basically make your choice from what you see there with what feature you want. Their cuts off in price ranges are 600 below and 600-800 then more on up but that should give you a really good feel of what is out there. They allow you to sort off on the left side by screen size and weight and so on.
Pretty much all laptops now days are all the same with just different features. They all have the same processors, the same mother boards, few options from hard drive manufacturers. They just assemble them. I personally like the Levino, formerly IBM. They tend to be a little more stronger for traveling around. They make sure they use higher quality parts rather than shiny parts with flashy graphics. They aren't as pretty but they last. You can always put a skin on them from like iPhone 6 Cases, Custom Phone Covers Skins For Electronics | Skinit if you want it to look different. But it is more important to get the features you want really. Dell has been improving their game lately too with better well thought out designs.
Here are the laptops under $400-$600 $400 - $599 - Laptop Reviews - CNET
Then Here are $600-$800 $600 - $749 - Laptop Reviews - CNET
My Recommendations for hardware you might want is.
64 bit intel CPU. You could probably get by with an I-5 vs I-7 as you can get a faster I-5 for cheaper than an I-7. I-7 is a much beefier chip and great for hard core gamers, programmers etc people that need maximum performance. AMD Chips, while fine you can run into unusual problems with certain software and well, lets face it going to AMD might save a couple bucks, $10-$20 overall but when you run into those weird issues, your going to spend more than that fixing them, I just don't recommend AMD for the average person unless you want to tinker with your PC.
Ram I would get as much as you can.
Hard Drive - Depends, Solid State, much faster however Less Space and more expensive. Regular drive, then I would go for highest RPM drive you can find. 7200 Minimum RPM. I tend to prefer Seagate over the others but over the years I have had better stability with seagate drives vs western digital. However they are all the same really.
Graphics card I would chose in this order, NVIDIA first choice, Intell Second Choice, ATI Radion falls into that tinker group but much more so and so for the average person I would just avoid the ATI Radion.
Beyond that it's all bells and whistles like if you want heated seats in a car. Hope that helps.