New MacBook Pro Recommendations?

I'm planning to replace my dual G5 tower (personal machine) with a new MacBook Pro, 17". I need to get down to a store and see if I can look at this in person, but doing so in Eugene, may be hard. So, I'm soliciting advice on two issues:

1. Should I get matte or glossy display? The glossy sure looks cool, but how susceptible is it to glare? I don't have a lot of glare in my work environment, so maybe that's moot and the glossy is better? What do folks think? Does it make a difference in color correction? I've found that Galbraith and such have tested with the matte displays, and that I really like having my monitors color corrected.
2. Since I'm going with the 17", I'm debating whether to go with the higher resolution version. My primary work mode will be with a 24" (or larger) monitor hooked up, so I use the laptop screen either if I'm on the road, not at my regular desk, and as a secondary monitor at my desk (typically for IM windows and similar). Is the higher res a lot harder to read, or? What are the pros and cons?

In general, this will be my do-everything machine. Personal stuff, as well as development projects of my own, etc. Thus, everything from email and Quicken to heavy coding, Lightroom/photo work, etc.

You don't always get what you pay for (IBM: $30m, 2 years; us: $3m, 1yr)

I just found out today, from the gentleman I did a consulting gig with a few years ago, that the company we did the architecture for (but who declined having us do the project), had IBM do it instead. That's not the interesting part (especially since during this time the company hired an ex-IBMer). The interesting part, as I was informed, is that IBM used our architecture (admittedly that's how it was explained, and we didn't get into details, but still), but took two years to do the project, and charged $30m!!! As I recall, we'd bid it at around a year, and I think around $2-3m! Either the project changed a lot, or that is just gross. I suspect IBM went in and did some massively overdone EJB implementation (this was a Java project, and I'd done a very basic prototype using Spring, Hibernate, and Velocity or JSP).