I'd recommend the Toshiba R700 series .. I have the one from BestBuy in addition to my MBP.. 13 inch machine with Core i3, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD, 720p display, 5-6 hours of stock battery life (not playing video though), eSATA port for 750$ .. Did I say 3 lbs and doesn't heat up as much as MBP?

the crappy part : Intel Display adapter and very bad speakers .. almost tin can like