4th gen i5 vs 4th gen i7 for a laptop

You can get a system equipped with an i7 within your projected budget for within $1500 easily, and I think for all intents and purposes, an i7 will treat you better. In layman's terms, the i7 is like a Camero while the i5 is like a Mazda 6. (Nothing against Mazda, of course.)

Go with dedicated for what you need/want to use the laptop for. There are graphics built into the i5 and i7 processors, but they cannot match most of NVidia's dedicated chips. Since you'll be interested in gaming and video editing, look into laptops with an 850M or higher.

The latter is just the stock card, which are basically reliable but cannot match the performance of the Intel 7260. Of course, you'll only benefit from the Intel 7260 card if you have - or acquire - a router that supports the AC wireless protocol. The card will still work with routers that don't support it, it simply will run at whatever speed and protocol the router will handle.

SSDs are great, but they are costly. For performance and durability, a SSD is recommended. For storage capacity and value, go with a hard drive. If you plan to save a lot of data to the computer, especially videos you've edited and games, then a hard drive will accommodate them more. Or, better yet, if your budget allows both, then you can get a relatively small SSD for Windows and programs, then use a hard drive for personal data.

Intel's new Broadwell chip will only be a shrink in the die and maybe a few minor fixes, but I don't think they will be worth the wait. The scuttlebutt at the moment is that we won't see 5th gen Broadwell chips until sometime early next year, and that's still speculative. A 4th gen processor from Intel will be up to the task.