laptop specs?

ogy

hey dunno if this should be in here or in technology but im planning on buying a laptop soon mainly to make and play music with.
Im not as into computers and stuff as i used to be so i was wondering if someone could give me an idea of what specs to look for when im buying. Im trying to keep under 1500 yos but guess i could go a little over. The main things ill be doing with the computer is recording music using live recording/sequencers/samplers/drum machines (cool edit pro/reason etc.). But also i want something to use live along with a band with a midi keyboard connected to trigger samples etc in reason. The computer i have now is fine for the recording end of things but it does tend to stall sometimes or i have to close everything else before i mix down a track or sometimes i get error messages about too little memory etc so id need the laptop to be fine for playing samples (wav/aif/etc files) on time and running reason and other programs smoothly. Also the laptop would be handier as i can bring it to the instruments i wanna record rather then having to lug marshall stacks into my dads office:) also could u suggest some reasonably high quality sound cards that are suited to this kinda thing
any advice would be appreciated
(mods feel free to move to technology or whatever)

ogy

also just wanted to add that id use it for all the usual stuff too like playing dvds/lite web authoring/broadband/maybe some photoshopping etc.