Need a little laptop advice

My birthday is coming up in March and I was planning on getting a new laptop for my birthday.
With so many different laptops from so many different vendors I can't really seem to find one that would suit my needs.

I'm a C++ programmer who (at the moment) has to use a flash drive to bring my projects around to compile them at different computers (with the compiler installed, which is why I would want a laptop).
I'm also into game programming so a decent/good video card would suffice as well.

My preferences for a laptop are (unless advised as unneeded for my purposes):
intel c2d
at least 1GB of RAM
a relatively large HD (120-200GB)
decent video card (i'm guessing G8 series is pushing it a bit)
screen size isn't important
Operating system doesn't really matter either I can just reformat it

My budget is around $500-800.

Hopefully the guys here at the great OC forums can help me out, I've asked for help once before and got a great response. Thanks a lot!

At least 2 gigs of RAM minimum.

I would look for a bare bones Dell Vostro 1500. Get the bare on everything but these three things

1st get a 8600GT if you looking to game on
2nd get the WXGA+ or WSXGA+ screen
3rd get the 9 cell battery

Everything else leave default. Should run around 700-800$. Then you can add buy ram, and better hard drive online. Lastly when the 45nm Core 2's come out you can add one down the line when your budget permits.

I used to do CAD and I still do a little mapping and the feeling of a cramped desktop sucks...get yourself a WSXGA+.