Laptop needed for my research - Any advice? Thank you!

Hey, I'm a student doing a research project, so I need a laptop to be able to carry around with me, here are the answers to the FAQS:
1_What is your budget?
below £400 as much as possible, although I can go slightly over if it gives me a bigger screen/huge improvement etc.

2_What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
as big a screen as possible, at least 15.6inches, 17 would be even better

3_What screen resolution do you want?
at least 1280x800

4_Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
portable, although I'm not going to cry if its heavy, thats very much a secondary concern.

5_How much battery life do you need?
As long as possible, in some archives and such you can't access power supplies.

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)?
I don't want to put games on it, they will just distract me from working!

7_What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing, surfing the web, playing music, watching movies, Etc.)
web, playing music, watching occasional films (on trains), most importantly I need it for LARGE amounts of word processing.

8_How much storage (H.D.D Capacity) do you need?
doesnt need to be big, I just need to store documents and about 30gb of music, and then maybe 10gb of films. The standard seems to be about 160gb, that would be plenty.

9_If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post the links to them.
Not really, as long as they are reputable.

10_How long do you want to keep your laptop?
Until the end of my phd so 4years approx, but it doesnt need games or anything so it shouldn't really get outdated, it jsut needs to keep running Windows properly!

11_If you would like to mention some other things about purchasing your ideal laptop, post them.
I dont need an OS, I'm probs just going to put Windows XP on it to keep it nice and simple, although I have Vista 64-bit so if you believe I should install that then please say (I figured a low-end laptop would be happier with XP). I have a high-end desktop so I don't like slow computers anymore, so this laptop needs to be snappy in Windows, on the web and word processing; and have a very good battery life in case I get stuck somewhere without a supply. I would like a large screen as I will be doing ALOT of reading from it of many documents! It doesn't need a graphics card though as no games will be played.

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.
Again, dont really mind as long as its reputable (and not bright pink).

13_What country do you live in?
England.


I built my desktop after a looooooong period of research, but I know nothing about laptops and don't have the time to repeat the learning process, so any and all advice will be greatly appreciated! The processors especially I know very little about.
many thanks for taking the time to read my post, FlaY.

Yeah thats a very good choice

No problem mate