I wouldn't recommend an HP laptop. If I remember correctly, they had one of the worst  failure rates for 2010.  They also come pre-loaded with all sorts of HP bloatware (My gf has one, it's pretty horrendous).

I think Toshiba satellites and Asus generally rank fairly high in reliability and performance. 

Have a look around here for some reviews.

Well I've been looking around, and saw this little guy from Lenovo.

IdeaPad Z560

i5 Processor
500 GB HD
15.6" LCD screen

$849

Pretty schnazzy if I do say so myself.

@A Bad Clown

Holy Guacamole! 1 Terabyte?

1. It is pretty much common knowledge that the best thing to do is reformat a new laptop. Every vendor nowadays goes for the "put lots of (mostly nonsensical) stuff onto the thing so the customer thinks s/he gets added value".

2. Only buy a laptop that uses standard video drivers from the chip manufacturer. Many people are left alone when they can't update drivers because their laptop seller used some "clever" proprietary video driver stuff and customer servicve is an unknown property three weeks after you bought the laptop.

3. There are probably around three or four Taiwanese manufacturers that manufacture roughly 99% of all laptops. Whether brand A makes better laptops than brand B is basically luck, they all come from the same valley in Taiwan.

The only thing is, that probably has an integrated graphics card, which isn't the end of the world, but you won't be able to do anything above low, perhaps medium for graphics.

I think Best Buy has the i7 toshiba's with 4gb memory, 500 gb hard drive, 16" screen, 512mb-1gb discrete graphics memory...and for $900-$1000 (or $850 I believe for one with integrated graphics).  The one negative that some people complain about with the Toshiba's is their resolution, which is 1366x768, not 1600x900.  Personally, I think it looks very good for a laptop, but apparently others have noticed the lower resolution.

I got an Ausus lap top, i7 quad core processor, 500GB HDD, ATi Radeon 5870 Graphics card, 8MB of ram, HDMI ports, 2 of them, Bluray drive, DVD read/write and a whole host of other features. I got my laptop at Best Buy roughly 1 year ago, and it has had zero problems since I brought it home. I game on it every single day, have about 15 tabs open in Chrome, (while gaming in windows mode) have about 9 newer released PC games installed, all running on max settings and max resolution. Anyways, like I said, got my laptop at Best Buy and I paid only 1,200$ for it new. It still runs quiet and smooth, very very impressed. I got the extended 3 year warranty 'just in case' and if it breaks before the 3 years I can bring it in and exchange it for either the exact same one, or the next best upgrade if available. This is covered by the in store warranty and not the manufactures warranty. I have gotten an entire laptop replaced at Best Buy before, they are very very amazing with their in store warranty. Long story short, if you have a Best Buy near you, which I think I read that you do, I would seriously suggest this laptop. The Asus G73. It's as close to 'future proof' as you can get right now. BUt like someone else said, no matter what you get or how much you spend, within 1 year it can easily be replaced. 

How long does it survive off charge while gaming? 2 hours?

If you're going a gaming laptop, Toshibas are good, cheap and decent build quality

Except that they have terrible cooling - a laptop cooling tray (or a wire oven tray to elevate it and get air flow) is required

I had two Toshibas in my life. One the screen broke after 2 years, one the wifi broke after 2 years.

Toshiba is evil and I will never buy one again.

all laptops have cooling problems as theyre in a smaller case they have to run cooler than a desktop

anyways, ya, who sells you the laptop doesnt make much of a difference as most of them are very similar and pretty much come with a lot of the same parts. i bought an acer becasue they have this cool wheel scroll thing on the touchpad which emulates the wheel on a mouse, it makes scrolling through txt files or browsing the web much easier. they also have a lot of models for you to choose from so you can get a specific build pretty easily

btw i think sony is having a deal 150$ dsicount for students, and all of their models will probably be coming with a bluray player and bluetooth in them, though they dont have the widest selection available it might be worth looking into.

Interesting you say that.  I've played Starcraft 2 for hours on end with my laptop.  The left side will get hot because that is where the hot air blows out, and the right side will be just as if the laptop has been turned off for 3 days.  I've never had any issues whatsoever with it warning me of heat, or turning off from heat, etc.