Help Buying First Laptop

I've just purchased a new condo and in the interest of saving space, would like to ditch my desktop and pick up a laptop. Here's my answers to the questions in the FAQ, I appreciate any tips you guys can provide...

1_What is your budget?
Max $1000 Canadian

2_What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
15 or 16" more than likely

3_What screen resolution do you want?
Something that will look good for the occasional gaming session and movie watching.

4_Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Desktop replacement, it will rarely leave my house.

5_How much battery life do you need?
Not a huge concern for me as it will be at home most of the time.

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)?
Yes I want to be able to play games, and would like something with a stand alone video card in it. I don't have any games I'm currently playing much on PCs but will want to be able to play Diablo 3 when it comes out for sure. I've never had a PC capable of running the new games on High detail so a Medium setting is more than enough for me.

7_What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing, surfing the web, playing music, watching movies, Etc.)
It will mostly be used for web surfing but also some Word/Excel stuff and music/movies.

8_How much storage (H.D.D Capacity) do you need?
250GB+

9_If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post the links to them.
I would like to buy local, and can get a bit of a deal on some Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba and HP laptops through work. If I buy on my own I would probably buy from one of these 2 companies as they have local stores to deal with:
http://www.a-power.com/home
http://www.ncix.com/

10_How long do you want to keep your laptop?
As long as I can. I imagine as I get older (30 now ) my gaming will decrease so it will become simply a web browsing tool.

11_If you would like to mention some other things about purchasing your ideal laptop, post them.
The things I would like to see in a new laptop are HDMI out so I can plug into my 52" Samsung LCD and 21" LCD monitor, a stand alone video card, and possibly even a BluRay drive.

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.
I don't have any real brand loyalty in regards to a laptop so I'm open to all options. I haven't heard a lot of good things about Acer but I'm very tempted by this one:
http://www.a-power.com/product-9264

13_What country do you live in?
Canada.

Thanks again for any suggestions or help!!