Laptop for Adobe Creative Cloud

Budget:
1200'ish

Expectations:
Running Adobe's suite of applications

Usage:
Day-to-day web and graphic design

Hello, all. Looking to purchase a laptop to free myself from my box a bit. I will be using my main box for the more intensive video editing applications, but am looking to handle the bulk of my other work for web and graphic design on a laptop. I have the creative cloud subscription.

First question is would the 11" afford me enough of an improvement in battery life to be a worthy alternative to the reduced real estate compared to one of the 15" models.

What is the ballpark battery life of a 15 vs 11 inch model? Does anyone know if the battery performance is noticeable between ssd and traditional spinning hdd?

I don't want to skimp too bad on the video card for instances when I might want or need to do some light motion work and the extra cuda cores help there with the mercury engine. And maybe some occasional gaming while away from home :)

Do you think 1200 is do-able for something that will handle multiple adobe apps at once without choking down on it?

Does anyone have some starting points for a workable config? Battery life is not of the utmost importance, but it would certainly be a refreshing change.

Ssd with external drive for my content, or save the money and go with a larger 7200rpm drive on the laptop?

Thanks for any input. Haven't bought a laptop in a while after 3 failed on me within a year and a half (not digital storm btw). But the mobility would certainly help my productivity.

Edited by Jason R - 17 Aug 2012 at 11:05pm

Wow, sorry about the delayed response, glad you bumped it, I suppose no one really knew how to respond to some of your questions. I'll do my best to help.

(1) Honestly all of the laptops have roughly the same battery life, mainly because the 11" is smaller and has a smaller battery to compensate for the smaller display. All performance laptops will give you roughly 2-3 hours on battery life.

(2) For $1,200 you can definitely get a solid laptop for creative work. Get lots of a memory and a nice large storage drive.

(3) Buy this configuration at $1,291 and you'll get the limited time free memory and storage upgrades from 8GB of memory to 16GB and 500GB to 750GB with a 7200RPM hard drive.

http://www.digitalstormonline.com/gaminglaptoploadx15.asp?id=728009

Edited by Alex - 11 Sep 2012 at 9:58pm