Laptop recommendations!

I'm looking to buy a laptop for college, but not just for your everyday course work.

The main things I'm looking for is speed and hard drive space. I am thinking along the lines of Core 2 Duo, and a hard drive of 250 Gb minimum.

I am still not sure on how much ram is necessary to run my tasks. I am a computer science student, so I will be multitasking and programming. I plan to run Windows and Linux on the laptop so I will also need to partition the hard drive, hence the need for ample hard drive space. I will be taking it with me to school, so screen size should be no bigger than 15.4".

I have been a desktop guy for as long as I can remember, and have little experience with laptops. I am not familiar with things such as battery life, keyboard layout, quality, and durability on laptops and was hoping to get some help from the laptop section .

I had this in mind, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6834114534

Please hit me with some knowledge on good laptops and brands. Budget is under $1000 All input is appreciated.

Woops, look like I jumped ahead too quickly without reading.

1_What is your budget?

$800

2_What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?

15.4"

3_What screen resolution do you want?

1280x800

4_Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?

Both but more portable

5_How much battery life do you need?

At least 6 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)?

No games

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

Taking notes, writing papers, researching, watching videos and listening to music. But mainly for programming and multitasking.

8_How much storage (H.D.D Capacity) do you need?

250 Gb min

9_If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post the links to them.

www.newegg.com

10_How long do you want to keep your laptop?

At least 2 years

11_If you would like to mention some other things about purchasing your ideal laptop, post them.

I would like to dual boot linux and xp

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.

None in particular

13_What country do you live in?

US.


Sorry for the previous post. Hope this is better.