Gaming Laptop

[Tickle Me Emo]

I'd recommend checking out Asus laptops. You can find them on Newegg or at Best Buy - which is a good place to go to get a feel for different brands/models anyways, unless your Best Buy sucks. They're usually well-rated and a good price for what you get. They tend to be configured to lean towards gamers, which means they're not the lightest things, have poor battery life, and can get pretty warm under load. If you're using your laptop like a desktop replacement (it sounds like you are), none of those things are major issues. If you do use it on the go, though, you might have to consider other options.

Here's an example of what $1k gets you: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220696

As for Alienware... if you want to get far less power for your $ and an 11.6" screen for gaming, cheers to you. An M11x "similarly configured" (slower) to that Asus is almost $1300. Alienware has a reputation for having the same failings as Asus - naturally, since they're both geared towards gamers. Although, with an 11" laptop, I bet it's not too heavy! I've also known 2 Alienware laptop owners, who owned 3 Alienware laptops, and all 3 had to be repaired within the first couple years...

Don't buy an HP or Gateway.

I'm not a fan of Dell either, I've known people that had problems with theirs. I have heard good things about some of their new Studio laptops... I'd have to research that, but I'm too lazy.

[StarsMine]

I'd recommend checking out Asus laptops. You can find them on Newegg or at Best Buy - which is a good place to go to get a feel for different brands/models anyways, unless your Best Buy sucks. They're usually well-rated and a good price for what you get. They tend to be configured to lean towards gamers, which means they're not the lightest things, have poor battery life, and can get pretty warm under load. If you're using your laptop like a desktop replacement (it sounds like you are), none of those things are major issues. If you do use it on the go, though, you might have to consider other options.

Here's an example of what $1k gets you: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220696

As for Alienware... if you want to get far less power for your $ and an 11.6" screen for gaming, cheers to you. An M11x "similarly configured" (slower) to that Asus is almost $1300. Alienware has a reputation for having the same failings as Asus - naturally, since they're both geared towards gamers. Although, with an 11" laptop, I bet it's not too heavy! I've also known 2 Alienware laptop owners, who owned 3 Alienware laptops, and all 3 had to be repaired within the first couple years...

Don't buy an HP or Gateway.

I'm not a fan of Dell either, I've known people that had problems with theirs. I have heard good things about some of their new Studio laptops... I'd have to research that, but I'm too lazy.

The m11x is better for gaming that that computer. it has a much more powerfull GPU(just no dx11). An I7 is silly if your trying to get a cheep gaming computer as there are few games that even use 4 cores let alone hyperthreading. that asus is also heavy. A laptop is ment to be portable, it needs to be light and have alot of battery. M11x beats it in that (~8 hours when not gaming ~2 hours when on something like L4D). the only thing you would be missing would be HDD space and I guess screen size on the m11x but you can always hook it up to a big moniter at home.

While I agree that alienware desktops are a waist of money they really build amazing laptops

[Perry]

Don't buy an HP or Gateway.

I'm not a fan of Dell either, I've known people that had problems with theirs. I have heard good things about some of their new Studio laptops... I'd have to research that, but I'm too lazy.

agreed. Check out there inspirons, I have two (one for me and the other my moms) great basic computer and for 700 bucks, great multimedia and gaming laptop.

My main is a dell desktop. awesome for the price and better than any other comparable computer.

[Tickle Me Emo]

The m11x is better for gaming that that computer. it has a much more powerfull GPU(just no dx11). An I7 is silly if your trying to get a cheep gaming computer as there are few games that even use 4 cores let alone hyperthreading. that asus is also heavy. A laptop is ment to be portable, it needs to be light and have alot of battery. M11x beats it in that (~8 hours when not gaming ~2 hours when on something like L4D). the only thing you would be missing would be HDD space and I guess screen size on the m11x but you can always hook it up to a big moniter at home.

While I agree that alienware desktops are a waist of money they really build amazing laptops

The "much more powerful GPU" is actually less powerful according to Notebookcheck (the only place I could find decent benchmarks), on 3dmark and gaming tests. I also checked the Futuremark ORB and confirmed average 3dmark scores are lower on the 335M.

The i7 single core clock speed is faster than the M11x's Core 2 Duo single core clock speed (1.6GHz vs. 1.3GHz). 4 cores isn't that useful for many games right now, sure, but that doesn't mean it will stay that way forever, and it can be useful for other things. Regardless, the i7 processor is faster for all applications.

I mentioned that it is heavy and eats battery; your claim that a laptop is "meant" to be portable is subjective to the user's needs, and I already mentioned that the Asus may not be the way to go if she needs a highly portable laptop.

I'm not fussed about HDD space, but screen size is a major issue if she doesn't want to drop even more money on a monitor, or doesn't want to use a setup like that. Using the laptop keyboard with a different monitor is not optimal, generally, so there's that too. Of course, she may already have this setup, but that wasn't specified in the OP.

There is no doubt that the M11x is more portable, it's barely bigger than my brother's netbook, and if that's what she wants, I'm not going to say it's a bad choice - I reconfigured it with the Core 2 Duo with comparable specs otherwise (slower GPU of course) and it's $924, plus shipping/tax, which for my zip code gave a total of... $999. Exactly the same price as the Asus. It's a question of what you want - more power, or more portability.

[DeadEyeDeNNi$]

Last year I bought a ASUS G50V for about $700.00 USD and it runs all games fine. Nice unit and still available

Specs:
http://rog.asus.com/2009_old_bak/pro...448A9CBAC#tabP

[Mrs. Xen_Warrior]

Okay lol thanks for all the suggestions, i'm not trying to replace my desktop i'm just looking for something portable that I can use when i'm not near my desktop.