High end fast laptop

Any recommendations on getting a laptop put together that is built for speed, but with a limited budget?

I would say in the 1K + or - area to start, and if the more expensive parts can be added later as upgrades, all the better.

This would mainly be used for graphics development and occasionally as a DAW for some personal recording ventures, this on a more minor scale.

As much as I try NOT to have 20 programs running in the system tray, I seem to not be able to workaround having at least these going in the background when working on a Flash project;

Photoshop
Fireworks
SmartDraw
Dreamweaver
Internet connection

Each has it's place in my work that cannot be duplicated as well as say, using either Illustrator or Fireworks, but not both.

Also, there's the thought that maybe some of the redundency could be lopped off if I were at expert level with each software... but....

No gaming whatsoever, just intense graphics and music. Any starting point ideas would be much appreciated. In case it matters, I'm located in Dallas, TX, prefer Windows XP OS, and tend to gravitate towards learning advanced features of software/hardware before I've fully grasped some of the basics.. which does come back to bite me on the ass regularly.

Thanks for any responses!

I thought Vista was cpu-intensive? I've heard more horror stories than positive on how it sucks up all the available resources.. or were you suggesting something different (buwish). I would actually love to switch to Linux, but as far as I know, they don't have an alt for Adobe Flash (the program, not player). Thanks for the reply....