Looking for Advice on Laptops

I'm looking to buy a laptop sometime toward the end of summer, and I just wanted some pointers on what to look for or where to go.  Also, what sort of price range I should be looking at given the stuff that I want to do with it.

I'm looking to get a lappy since I want to start taking notes with it at school next term. 
I know once I purchase a laptop, it's gonna become my main computer.  That means I'll probably want it to run games (CS Source, Dawn of War, C&C First Decade, etc.).  I don't need anything mind-blowing but I'd just like it to be powerful enough to at least be able to run these games really well (as a perk).
I know it'd be better if I got a tower for gaming, but I don't want to take up any extra space in my room with a desk.  Portability is the main reason I'm looking at a lappy since I WOULD want to take it to school. So I definitely wouldn't want anything too heavy or too big (I'm not picky about screen size really). A respectable battery life would be nice as well.

I'm hoping to spend less than $1500 CDN.  Anyone got any suggestions/pointers? Laptop advice? I'm new to the laptop thing.

Choose either one of these: Portability or Gaming ability. For gaming:Dell XPS m1701 (17" wide, 3.4kg without the charger), basically almost all 17" widescreen DTR laptops. Portability: Liberetto series, Sony TX
The lowest gfx card that you should accept is geeforce 7200 or X1400, with at least 128mb Local memory, none of that hyper memory or turbo cache shit. 1GB of ram should be minimum. 80gb+ hdd should minimum also. Look for either the centrino/core(solo/duo)/Pentium M badge or the turion badge. You'll have to sacrifice portability if you want to be able to play certain games (I'm assuming you wont be playing FEAR,Oblivion).