As I was posting the specs, I was thinking the same thing Xenocide. That was a big price increase. So I was looking at the Dell, te same one that you posted Ediseye.
Ediseye's one has the 7200rpm harddisk, which i recommend, and which the HP ones don't offer which puts Dell in front imo. Otherwise that's a fantastic looking laptop.
The upgrade of the graphics is very significant, from 7150M to 8400M you get about an extra 10fps, 8400M to 8600M GT gets you about 40 extra frames per second, which is massive. Its a very capable card, will play almost anything, and worth the extra money.
Again, we can compare them to the desktop ones,
here. Look how high up the 8600 gts is vs the 8400 and the 7300 (roughly equivalent to the 7150M).
Your bigger budget means you can look at the XPS now, which is smaller and lighter and nicer looking than the Inspiron i believe.
Here's an XPS M1530:
SYSTEM COLOR Tuxedo Black edit
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5250 (2MB cache/1.5GHz/667Mhz FSB) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® Vista Home Premium Edition edit
LCD AND CAMERA Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch LCD (1280x800) & 2.0 MP Camera edit
MEMORY 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz (2 Dimms) edit
HARD DRIVE Speed: 120GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive edit
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE Slot Load DVD+/-RW (DVD/CD read/write) edit
VIDEO CARD 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT edit
WIRELESS CARDS Dell Wireless 1490 802.11a/g Mini Card edit
BATTERY OPTIONS 56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery edit
SOUND OPTIONS High Definition Audio 2.0
$1,324
You seem to pay a bit of a premium for the XPS though, so here's an Inspiron 1520:
My Components
SYSTEM COLOR Jet Black edit
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5250 (1.5GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition edit
DISPLAY High Resolution, glossy widescreen 15.4 inch display (1440x900) edit
VIDEO CARD 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT edit
MEMORY 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz edit
HARD DRIVE Speed: 120GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) edit
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE CD / DVD writer (DVD+/-RW Drive) edit
WIRELESS NETWORK CARDS Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini-Card edit
INTEGRATED WEBCAM No Webcam Option edit
BATTERY OPTIONS 56Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell) edit
SOUND OPTIONS High Definition Audio 2.0 edit
$1,199
With both of these, i recommend a small processor upgrade to the Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5450 (1.66GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache) for $50 if your budget allows. Depends whether you want XPS or if you're fine with the ordinary inspiron. Personally i'd probably have the inspiron with a small processor upgrade to bring it up to $1,250 - $1,300 depending on what you can afford.
I added a higher resolution display to the inspiron as that seems like a good option to me, but you could always drop it in favour of a bigger processor upgrade or a lower price.
They will both beat the Macbooks hands down, and they will both play halo on full settings, because I had a 6600GT which is somewhat slower than the 8600 GT and it played halo on full settings fine. They'll run most other games on high settings fine too.
Are the prices of these too low or too high? Set a maximum budget and i'll spec one up to fit if you like.