Laptop thoughts

So I've been thinking about getting a laptop to replace my ailing Gateway M275, one of the first convertable tablet PCs, and it's great but just not cutting it anymore. I dont care much for 17" screens but would consider it if the price is right, also i'm not looking for tablet functionality either.
What I am looking for is 12-15.4" his res display with C2D, 1 gig minimum memory, HD space doesn't matter, i'll use my existing HD, but like everyone else I do care about having a halfway decent GFX card, I mostly play CS:S, BF2. Finally my price ranger is around 1500, I'm a poor college student so justifying anything higher would mean like, eating rice and beans for the rest of the year.
One thing I've noticed is that companies love to gouge for memory prices, you can buy a gig of DDR2 667 for 70-90 on newegg whereas not only will companies charge you 100-150+ but even charge you 40+ to use a 1 gig board instead of 2 512 boards. That kind of irritates me, but what can you do.
I'm also looking into perhaps buying a mac with an intel processor, if i could find a macbook or whatever they're calling them these days with a 12" screen around 1500 I'd buy it in a heart beat, but apple only seems to be selling them in 15" or higher. I also am not to sure how dual booting osx and xp works too well either, but I wouldn't mind using osx for casual things and xp for just gaming, keeping crap off my xp install is something i can't complain about.
So if ya'll have some suggestions, i'd like to listen. I've looked on Newegg, and dell/gateway/alienware, I've looked at killernotebooks as well, I was impressed with them, unless i can find the mac i'd probably go with one of the cheaper models they offer.