My wife wants a notebook for work.  She will only use it for email, Work, Excel, and Internet.
 
I priced out a very nice 17 inch Dell Vostro 1700 for $1,700.
 
Can I get away with spending a lot less and still take care of her needs.  She would like a 17 in monitor and it needs to run smoothly without any slowness.  I assume any new notebook will run fast enough though.
 
Any ideas?

VOSTRO 1700 is a good laptop , but what specification did her choose?

It was decked out with a t7500, 2gm, upgraded video card and monitor, bluetooth, etc....
 
It was complete overkill.  I just wasnt a speedy 17 incher for her to use Word, excel, internet, email, and and occasional movie.

You can spend alot less, but the big killer is the 17" LCD.
 
The main source IMO for what she needs would be the low-end HP 17" models with Either low Intel or Low AMD processors both with intergrated video. Get dual core of course, but a Turion X2 or low end Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo) would be fine for what she's doing. dual core is nice so that when anti-virus etc kicks in it doesn't lock everything up, but it doesn't need to be killer fast to enjoy that.  
 
That would be my suggestiong, a cheap $1000 or less HP DV9xxx series laptop.
 
Here's two examples of the type of laptop I'm talking about, one from HP one from Gateway, I just use BestBuy as they are easy to find in the US, and have standard models, be sure to shop around for prices;
 
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspag [...] 3160885962
 
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspag [...] 0743304925

Well, I now this post is a little old and if the onwer doesn't check out this deal I doubt that it is going to be there for long, I found a Vostro 1700 in the Dell Outlet (scratch and Dent) for less then a grand with almost identical stats.   http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlin [...] 1700&s=dfb
Its stats are:
Vostro 1700  
Intel Core 2 Duo - 22GHz (T7500)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Basic
160 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
3 GB DDR2 RAM
DVD/RW
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Intel 4965 802.11a/g/n Dual-Band Mini Card
for $989.00
 
Like I said before, it will probably be gone by the time you read this (thats how high the demand is) but I used this as an example of what you can find in Dell Outlet.