Laptop Advice Please

Hi there, as you can see in my sig, I've got a zv6000, and it's 2 years old right now. It was great (and still is) for the time, but with games like Oblivion and such running around, I think it's time to upgrade.

I've been posting all over lately asking about different desktop set-ups and pricing them out and trying to learn as much as I can, but it occurs to me that it might be better (in the long run) to get a nice laptop. (Especially since I'm looking at re-enlisting in the Navy this fall).

At any rate, these are the things I'll be (hopefully) doing on the laptop:

Oblivion
WoW
City of Heroes
LotR: Online
(Maybe a few other MMO's here or there... not sure yet)
Battle for Middle-earth II
Titan Quest (With IT expansion)
AoE 3
C&C (the newest one)
HL2
Halo
Photoshop (CS2)
Watching movies (DVD's or AVI's)
Listening to music (usually while in-game, sometimes while not)
Bit of C++/VB programming and some web design.

That's all I can really think of off the top of my head, but as you can see, I like to do a little bit of everything. Resolution doesn't matter to me so much, I'm perfectly happy with 1280x800 and wouldn't mind if I had to bump it down for some games... I just want overall good performance and the ability to play some new fun games.

Let me know what you think, I don't have a ton of money, but I've been thinking of financing it (which is what I did with my HP), so cost might not be a HUGE problem... Ideally I'd like to keep it under $2,000.

Let's see what you guys come up with and we can go from there.

Thanks in advance for any helpful comments/thoughts/advice.

EDIT:
Just wanted to ask a quick question as well...

I've seen various laptop cooling devices over the two years I've had this one but I've always been skeptical of how well they work. Many of them plug into the USB port and are supposed to work wonders for cooling... I was just wondering if anybody here knows from experience of any that work for sure (or don't work at all). Thanks