I recently got a latitude 820, which depending on how it is configured may wind up in that ball park. I think I upped the processor, increased ram to 2gb of ddr2-667, upped the video card, and got a larger/faster hard drive and it was $1800 and change. The base package when I looked earlier was $1300 or so for the mid tier.
Big machine. Very nice though, I was impressed. I'm not a touchpoint person so I can't comment on that. 15.4 inch wide screen. A more powerful video solution might have been better though, I run a dual monitor setup and I think I can see delays sometimes which I would expect would be removed with more powerful video. For business use I found it fine however, and I even tested it with a few games and it seemed to do fine but I did not really do much with it.
IBM's have always been nice though. I havent had one in a few years. I'd see how they price out as between the two I would lean towards IBM (I have not seen their current offerings though, and am basing this off of one I had a few years back).
Whoever you go with, take a reasonable warranty. These are expensive if they break so it is one case where I buy and recommend getting warranties (at a level appropriate for how they charge).
These are some of the features I want:
