Hi sifus and bros and sisters, need your advice hunting for a new laptop. Much as I don't want to, my old faithful Dell Inspiron 1420 is starting to have screen issues, and have had to repair once already; maybe time for a new one and retire this machine to less demanding work LOL; though the T9300 on this baby can still keep up with faster and newer machines. 

1. Preferred Brand - Dell or Asus, Lenovo can consider-- Acer only if that model is reliable. Can't afford to send it back if it keeps having hardware issues and I've heard some horror stories about Acer after sales service (NO Toshiba, no Samsung, and NO HP please, I takut their PC division fold already will have problems in future).

2. Budget - ~ RM3k or less, RM25XX-RM29XX is ideal.

3. Usage - IT student, so expect to be doing stuff like Matlab, a lot of programming and compiling, database work and other CS related stuff. I'm doing Folding@home, so I need a powerful processor. Also, I believe in future proofing my machine, so looking for 2nd gen i7 and minimum 4GB DDR3 RAM. Other uses: surfing, watch movies on occasion, facebook gaming, playing old puzzle games like Bejeweled 3 and Bejeweled Blitz. Note that I usually have 700+ tabs open in Firefox and around 40-50 tabs in Chrome at any given time. The laptop will not be travelling much-- mostly between my uni and home once a week, since I already have an Asus VX6 for mobile computing. Used mostly while plugged in and will be running very long hours due to F@h work (estimated >18 hours daily).

4. Preferred laptop/screen size - 14"-15", nice resolution (>1440 x 900, maybe 1920 x 1080?), prefer non-glossy display, but can deal with glossy mirrors masquerading as screens    (why la comp makers all no more 14.1"?? I miss that screen size so much, 14.0" just seems too weird after years on 14.1")... If possible I want to avoid Nvidia Optimus or similar switchable functionality: planning to dual-boot Windows with Linux and last I heard, Optimus enabled systems will not let Linux systems recognise the discrete card so you end up stuck with only the integrated graphics. Soundcard and speakers-- I use a USB DAC with Senn HD650 so it's not really an issue.
Don't really care what it looks like, it's for me to use not admire after all. I would like it if the laptop has solid build quality; don't like all plasticky flimsy kind of feel. Also VERY important: the laptop should have good ventilation-- plenty of vents at the bottom and no complaints about overheating.

Want lots of connectivity options on the laptop... so USB 3.0 and hopefully 3 USB ports (wish for 4 but I think nowadays no more laptops with 4 USB ports. ). Not much of a gamer, but want a good discrete graphics processor as well, maybe with around 512MB of graphic memory? Also HDD hopefully 500GB or bigger. Not interested in Blu-Ray though nice to have if on there. Have my own MSDN copy of Win7 Pro x64 already, so the laptop doesn't have to come with a preinstalled system... I'd rather it come without actually.

Sorry if these specs are too hard to find in one package, but the main thing I want is a well built lappy that has lots of processing and computing muscle and is tahan lasak enough to go for another 3-4 years at least. Saw that Dell Inspiron 15R has the very latest 2nd gen i7 core-- is that good? Thank you in advance.