In reply to woodsy:
A grand will buy you a pretty good hard tail but a compromised full susser. It's something of a truism but you will learn more about bike handling by sticking with a hard tail. Less to go wrong too and more versatile.
It's really hard to go wrong with the big names, trek, specialised, giant etc. Also Boardman are getting good reviews.
Although the normal advice is to make your choice on the quality of the frame and wheels a poor fork can really wreck a bike at the price points you are talking about and be expensive to replace.