In fairness, you are getting some pretty great hardware and software for that $1,000. It's not like Apple is unfairly cheating you out of gobs of money and giving you a sub-par product in return. They're giving you something that's arguably worth $1,000. But given that I already have a pretty good desktop and I mainly plan on using my laptop for schoolwork and a bit of web browsing, a MacBook would be so overbuilt for my needs it's not even funny.
Right now I've got my eye on a $550 Gateway. 17" screen, Intel Core i3 processor, 4 Gbs of DDR3 RAM, a 500 Gb hard drive, built in webcam, mic, and media reader, and Windows 7 64-bit--Home Premium, granted, but what are you gonna do? It should still work okay. I imagine it'll have some bloatware, but I can easily format that s*** out and maybe upgrade it to my copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. Of course, this laptop is also overbuilt for my needs, but a little extra power never hurts and it's only half the price of a MacBook, so I'm cool with that.