Need help, recomendations on laptop

the one with questions

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Jul 21, 2009
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I'm going into my sophomore year of high school in the fall and need some help deciding on a laptop that I want.

1_What is your budget?
$1100

2_What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
15 or 16 inch

3_What screen resolution do you want?
Not sure... Good enough for games

4_Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
In between, portable but needs to be powerful.

5_How much battery life do you need?
2+ hours

6_Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
All of The Orange Box preferably on high, but can deal with medium. Brothers in Arms, but unlikely considering the req's. Call of Duty 4 on medium, and Modern Warfare 2 when it comes out on low or medium, but that can be played on the desktop.

7_What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing, surfing the web, playing music, watching movies, Etc.) Music

8_How much storage (H.D.D Capacity) do you need? 320 GB (7200 rpm)

9_If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post the links to them. Newegg is always good, otherwise not sure.

10_How long do you want to keep your laptop? Three years, maybe four

11_If you would like to mention some other things about purchasing your ideal laptop, post them.
I'd like 4 GB RAM, 1066 MHz FSB, webcam, microphone...

12_Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
Not really a fan of Asus because I'm not willing to deal with their customer support.

13_What country do you live in? U.S.

I've looked at the Hp HDX16, and the Dell Studio XPS 16, but don't really have any other models in mind, so if I could hear your opinions it would be greatly appreciated.