Visual effects student looking for laptop

Hey, I am a student at the Art Institute of Colorado for Visual Effects and Motion Graphics and I'm planning on buying a laptop. I was thinking that a laptop that could handle any games will be able to handle all my software packages such as 3D studio Max, Maya, After Effects, Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator and such. I am also an avid gamer so I'd like for the laptop to be able to play the latest games with out a problem and not have to buy a new laptop as soon as DX10 comes out, so i assume an 8800 gt would be required.

I am also a home depot associate so I get 12% off of any Dell computer that I buy including the XPS systems. I believe i get 12% off Alienware too. If Dell's aren't so great I'm more than willing to buy a computer from anywhere as long as the price is competitive to Dell's (with the discount). I hear lots of companies do student discounts also.

I'm not sure which computer I should go for. I don't understand the difference between some of their XPS systems and the Inspiron systems. I'm trying to keep my budget right around $1000 give or take ($1200 at the most but i'd like to stay at the $1000 range). If someone could build me a good dell/hp/toshiba/whatever computer on the website and post it here that would be great or just post the specs, or even find a pre-made one.

I have expierence in building desktop computers as I've been building my own for a good 6-7 years now. If building a laptop is anything like that or cheaper I'd be willing to take the challenge and build one! I've heard that buying the least amount of memory and then just adding my own memory from somewhere like newegg.com is the best bet.

Thanks in advance!