So I took the plunge and bought a new laptop, it will be here wednesday. It's a Lenovo, has 24gb ram (and is upgradeable to 40gb) and has 1tb SSD (which is also upgradeable up to 2tb)
It was $475 so was in the budget, and it looks really nice, FHD 15.6 inch non glare display and low blue light. Super excited