Z71V vs. i9300

Z71V vs. i9300
I'm debating between these two machines, and am wondering what the advantage of the Asus is. It's got a few minor advantages, but I'm having a hard time finding a reason to pay more for a machine with a smaller screen and a slower GPU. The only real, concrete advantage I can see to the ASUS is the dual-battery mode, but my configuration of the Dell includes both batteries -- and hibernating to change them out isn't that big of a deal.

I want:

CD writer
Gaming performance
HD >60gb
High resolution display
Good battery life
Cheapish

The 9300 I've specced out comes to $1300 with the coupon (I'll have to shell out another $125 for memory), and has:

1.6 P-M
256 ram
80gb disk
6800
WUXGA
6 and 9-cell batteries
CD writer

Asus (comes to $1521 with student discount from ISTNC -- do they have free shipping?)
1.6 P-M
1gb ram
80gb disk
6600
WSXGA
6 and 9 cell batteries (dual-battery option)
CD writer


So, it's looking like this:

i9300:

+ More powerful GPU
+ Bigger screen/better resolution
+ Cheaper
- It's a Dell
- Lower battery life
- Use of both batteries requires hibernating the computer to switch

Asus:
+ More portable
+ Can order the lower-FSB processor and pinmod it
+ ALS
+ Probably better construction
+ Buying from small business rather than Dell
- More expensive
- Worse screen, lower resolution, weaker GPU

I really want a reason to get the Asus, but the pure power of the Dell and the lower price are hard to argue with. What am I missing?


Where's the cheapest place to get an Z71V?
Are the onboard speakers of the Z71V better than those on the Dell?
Can the GPU of the Asus be upgraded later?
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It's going to both sit at home and ride around with me.

I imagine this computer will both play Half-Life and come with me to classes and the laboratory.

Edit: How is the build quality on the i9300?

1Cent: I've read a bunch about the sound system on the Z71V. How good, really, is it?

Does the 9% from fatwallet stack with the other dell coupons?

That's actually a big factor in my decision. I'm a musician/music teacher, and it'd be nice to be able to play things on my lappy for my students without external speakers and without it sounding like shite.

Build quality is something I'm concerned about. I own an Arima/eMachines model whose rubber feet fell off, causing it to fall off a table onto carpet when I tripped over a power cable, causing one of the hinges to break (because of a bad design) and a latent manufacturing defect in the cable feeding the backlight inverter to cause the screen to flicker.

Another friend of mine ran over his powerbook with a car, and it still ran.

I'm not planning on running over a machine with a car, but I'd like it to be tough.

Another question for you i9300/Z71V owners:

Do either of these machines have a way to turn off the status LED's when the system's on, to make viewing more pleasant in a dark room?

If you're in a darkened room with the screen dim, the LED's can be almost as bright as the screen ... which is very distracting.

Nah, they're good sometimes -- like when I want to know if my HDD's thrashing, etc.

My current system can toggle them with Fn + F1. Do either of these systems have a similar toggle?