Alrighty, well apologies for the late reply but I thought I'd let you all know what I ended up getting.
I got in contact with a guy down the street through a local classifieds site, as he was interested in getting a macbook air and a macbook for his girlfriend/wife. As it so happens, I had a macbook air and an old, upgraded 2.4GHz unibody.
I won the unibody from a competition at uni, so this cost me nothing, and gave me ~2 years of solid use.
The Air, I got from local classifieds too, for very cheap, as it was in another language (Korean) and the guy didn't know how to translate it.
So, I translated what I could and changed the main apps and system to English, and then flashed over it with a fresh install of OS Lion and iLife.
So far, about ~2 hours invested in it and a small amount of money.
In any case, traded him those two for a early '11 15" 2.2GHz MBP w/ 1GB VRAM.
Very happy. Upgrading to 16GB RAM and am running one 120GB 6GB/s SSD in the main 'bay, and a 512GB 3GB/s in the optical (as it only supports up to 3GB/s)
This isn't a storage problem, as 632GB is plenty for my everyday use, as at home I wirelessly share data, and also store it in externals.
Also, using both SSDs fixes quite a lot of the reported heat/battery problem common in '11 MBPs, as they don't heat up to a ridiculous amount. It also gets rid of the horrid "fan" sound that the platter-disks make themselves.
Also, another tip that helps me get the quoted 7 hours battery life (or 6 if using Optus' USB internet) is to use the app gfxcardstatus and use only the integrated graphics, unless needed for movies, etc.
This fixes a massive battery drain as, before, using Google Chrome instantly turns on the Discrete Graphics, which pointlessly wears down the internal components when you switch programs, and also heats it up to 90C or so within ten minutes.
Never had it go over ~2000rpm since.
Runs silent and speedy.
Didn't bother getting a hi-res screen to self-install, as my eyesight isn't very good with text in the distance in any case, and I like to be able to see around the screen easily (because assassins, obviously)
All in all, cost me out of my pocket about $250 for extra components, so on top of the Air, about $750. Very happy, and if I decide I like the new models in a week more, I can always resell this one for well over $750, even without the SSDs.
A big thankyou to everyone who helped, and hopefully my little tips will help anyone else still having trouble with the '11 MBPs battery life.
Cheers!!
