Between DH & I we've bought probably 10 laptops in the last 3 years - we use them for everything in our house. One of them does nothing but use its camera to watch our front porch, LOL. Our favorite brand for laptops is Acer. I've also been happy with HP, Dell and Lenovo laptops. I do NOT like Gateway. My main 2 laptops that I use the most are both Acer and I'm very happy with them both.
We also both work in IT, and we both hate Windows 8. Personally I will not buy a Win 8 machine; you can still get Windows 7 pretty easily and it's going to be compatible with most software. We have 2 win 8 machines in our house and they do NOT play nice with the rest of the network. Fortunately they're for DH's work so they're his nightmare, not mine!
If you're using it primarily for your embroidery machine, you will not need a fancy processor, so that will save you a lot of money. If you want a CD drive, make sure you're looking at "laptops", not "netbooks". Netbooks are much smaller and weaker and normally do not have CD drives. I have a netbook and I don't like it - it's so weak it can't even stream Pandora properly!
Try newegg.com - they have a pretty good selection and their buyers tend to leave good reviews. I purchased a refurb machine from them in the past and had no problems with it; did a quick search and if you're willing to buy refurb, it looks like you can get a pretty good machine for right around $150. If not, I see a couple Acer laptops with Windows 7 running around $325-350.