Laptop advice, please

Hi,

I need to get a replacement laptop rather urgently. Could anyone here help offer some advice to narrow down my selection?

1_What is your budget?
up to SGD $1,400 (approximately USD $1,000).

2_What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
13.3" or less

3_What screen resolution do you want?
Something decent, but doesn't have to be top-end

4_Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Both, but leaning more towards portability.
This is going to be my only computer, but I travel quite a bit and I would like to be able to bring it around with me. I would like a system that weighs 2kg or less.

5_How much battery life do you need?
Anything more than 2-3hrs is great. I mostly work off A/C power anyway.

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, but not a high priority.
I play FF XI (medium setting is good enough for me), and some Facebook games.

7_What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.)
Excel/Word/Powerpoint, general surfing, watching DVD. Generally quite a bit of multi-tasking.

8_How much storage (H.D.D Capacity) do you need?
Anything bigger than 60GB is good.

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

10_How long do you want to keep your laptop?
As long as possible.

11_What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
DVD writer

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 want to buy HP or Compaq or Lenovo based on my past experience (bad design; lots of problems). I'd heard that Acer's not reliable either, so if possible would like to avoid it as well.

13_What country do you live in?
Singapore

14_Please tell us any additional information if needed.
It seems that lightweight + cheap = netbooks; however the CPUs on these are only 1.6GHZ max. Would that be good enough for multi-tasking?
My current laptop (which is unfortunately dead) has a Pentium 1.86GHz, and it does feel kinda slow at times..