I assume you have the 17" MBP? If yes, then you might try to take it to an Apple Store and see if they will let you pay for the upgrade. Also if yes, you can buy a higher res screen on ebay, and through a lot of hardware and software work, you can replace it
If you are on a 15" MBP then you would go with the ebay option. Again with the hard work.
As far as ghosting the drive. Do you have an external of equal or larger capacity?
If yes, then you want to download Carbon Copy Cloner, and clone your MBP hard drive onto your external and make it bootable. Then you can get the new drive, put it in the machine and go the opposite direction. Only this time you want to boot off of the external. clone from the external onto the internal, and then run startup disk (in the system prefs) to tell it to use the internal as the boot.
If no, you MAY be able to buy an enclosure (SATA internal connector, Firewire or USB external connector, 2.5" size) and then boot off that when you install the new drive. Then, install CCC and clone to the new internal. Run startup disk to tell it to boot to the internal drive and you will be done
