Asus UL/PL30JT vs. Vaio Z

I am in a dilemma trying to select my next laptop. I really need to get a new laptop asap due to my HP DV3 giving me problems.

I am going back and forth in selecting the right "category" of laptop. It will be my one and only main computer but that doesn't mean I need the BEST CPU, BEST vid card as I don't run intensive applications DAILY. That being said, I will do music editing, photography work and a bit of video editing so I need a descent cpu+vid card.

The laptop choices I have came down to include Macbook Pro 15 (please come out), Asus UL30JT/PL30JT, N82, Vaio Z, etc.

As for the Asus CULV notebooks (UL), they seem to offer GREAT battery life and portability (which is a plus since I am a student who relies on it for heavy note taking during lectures).

I know the CULV laptops won't have any issues in daily tasks like browsing, msn, word etc.

My concern is that I have never used or even tried a CULV laptop...how much of a performance deficit can I expect from a Core i5 CULV and a Core i5-540??

Examples: During what specific tasks will I start to notice a difference?

Basically, I want more thoughts on these CULV laptops as they tend to become more popular and seem ideal for great portability+battery+price.

However, if I am going to lose "a noticeable" difference, I may want to look elsewhere -> Vaio Z, MBP etc.

 

You will see a difference in photoshop, gaming, video editing, encoding and synthetic benchmarks. Day to day tasks you won't notice a thing.

My asus ul30-a2 that I used before had a 1.3ghz turbo'd to 1.73ghz culv su7300 and for everyday tasks was just as fast as my e8400 desktop c2d overclocked to 3.8ghz.