I'm looking for a machine (has to be a laptop) reasonably fast enough to handle editing/transcoding/rendering to Blu-ray disc of full true HD 1080p (1920x1080) video from a Samsung R10 camcorder - MPEG4 25fps (not the Sony-Panasonic AVCHD format):

• To be able to browse through the footage (say, quarter screen is fine for monitoring) and do simple edits - cut out bad bits, add titles, fades, nothing too fancy
• To be able to burn the footage in 1920x1080p 24p (twenty-four) fps to blu-ray, probably don't mind if I have to leave it for a few hours, or even overnight, as long as its not still running in the morning or takes days. I ALREADY have an external USB 2.0 LG BE06LU10 blu-ray burner.

Does quad core make much difference? Or would Dual-core suffice for the above?

NVidia because of CUDA for increased speed. What software today can take advantage of this? Which graphics card do I need?

So far I've found Dell/Alienware to be well-specified, having a 5yr old Dell laptop that still runs well, albeit slow by today's standards, gives me a good impression.

My concerns are too much fan-noise and budget and some Dell Precision Laptops exceed 1500 pounds.

Thoughts?