Laptop recommendations

Please help me choose a laptop, my experience buying computers has been with desktops, but I'm a little lost when it comes to choosing a laptop.

1_What is your budget?
$1500 max

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

3_What screen resolution do you want?
The higher the better

4_Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
portable

5_How much battery life do you need?
at least 2 hrs, hopefully more.

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 not really, im more of a console gamer, although diablo iii may change that 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.)
listening to music
creating music (w/reason or similar program)
watching movies/tv shows
surfing web
programming and web development (perl, java, html, etc)


8_How much storage (H.D.D Capacity) do you need?
500gb+

9_If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post the links to them.
newegg.com
tigerdirect.com
Any other trustworthy site if the price is right

10_How long do you want to keep your laptop?
3 years at least

11_If you would like to mention some other things about purchasing your ideal laptop, post them.
sturdy, at least 4GB RAM, decent vid card, HDMI output so i can output to my tv, wireless LAN (a/b/g is fine), possibly dual boot a linux/unix distro (bsd maybe?) at some point

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.

No macs, too expensive

I have only dealt with an HP nc6400 laptop for work, no problems really (until they gave me vista, of course).


13_What country do you live in?
USA

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

Actually, I have never even heard of that brand. The laptop looks nice, but I would rather get one with more HD space and RAM.

I just priced an HP HDX18t out with the following for $1454. Any thoughts on this one? Looks like a decent deal to me for the cost

Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor P8700 (2.53GHz)
FREE Upgrade to 4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm) - For 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics
500GB 7200RPM SATA Dual Hard Drive (250GB x 2) with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT - For DDR2 Memory
18.4" diagonal High Definition HP Ultra BrightView Infinity Display (1920x1080p)
Lightscribe Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer