Looking into getting a laptop.Follow

For laptops, Dell Latitudes make excellent gaming laptops if you get them wth the Quadro chip. Can be expensive though. The dell precisions also really work well for that and you can build a desktop class laptop on a precision chassis. spendy as hell though. Asus is good for a lots of horsepower, lots of processor and video goodness laptop platform at a lower price. Toshiba sometimes has decently priced units with good specifications as well, but they have had some off years recently. HP is another option, though their laptop chassis tend to overheat in my experiance.

I only use Asus motherboards in my workstation builds, their laptops use the same components and circuit boards.

I don't know what your budget is but take a look at this. I just got it delivered yesterday. Scroll down the page for four versions at different prices - I bought the i7-3630QM with 8GB DDR3. Read the reviews to get the good and the bad.

I like it because instead of a dvd drive, it has a bay that you can stick a (lenovo brand, of course) dvd drive in. Or a hard drive. Or a second video card, which is they way this laptop ships. SLI for gaming. Taking the advice of the reviews, the first thing I did was go to Lenovo's website and downloaded the video driver. Nvidia had a newer one, but they advise you to dl it from Lenovo in order to not void the warrantee.

I did a lot of research into a good laptop for a good price. I didn't go very deep into the ASUS gaming laptops (ASUS ROG) but they are getting a lot of attention. I've owned a lenovo thinkpad and loved it. IBM just knows how to engineer things.

I decided on the i7 over the i5 because it's only $100 to help future proof the laptop. People will tell you that there's no great difference in gaming between an i7 and an i5. But keep two things in mind that I picked up from reading around - in this SLI system the GPU is not going to be the bottleneck, and rumor has it that the new game engines are being built to take advantage of the i7 (four threads? - sorry, my ignorance is showing).

Cons (after only a couple of hours of use): fingerprint magnet, but that isn't a huge deal for me in terms of priorities.

Pros: fantastic graphics and the backlit keyboard. I didn't think I was going to like the red backlighting, but in person it does not look garish at all.

Meh: the software it ships with. I started deleting stuff but found that I was deciding to give most of the programs a chance and re-visit the issue in a week or two. I can't really say there's a lot of junk that it ships with.

Meh: Windows 8. I thought I would hate it, and was thinking I would just go for the Classic Shell, but after a couple of hours of use I'm finding that it isn't as bad as I expected. We'll see if I get used to it or if my patience runs out first.

WARNING: take note of where the laptop is shipping from. When I bought mine, Amazon was not selling it directly and the outfit that it shipped from put some heavy restrictions on delivery. Of course I asked for expedited shipping, who wants to wait when you finally pull the trigger? I knew FedEx would make an attempt on Friday and I figured I'd take the door sticker and go pick it up on Saturday. It was a good thing I called first. I was told "The shipper has put certain restrictions on this, and the only thing we can do without their permission is deliver the package." Meaning, I could not sign a door sticker for re-delivery, I could not have it sent across the street to my neighbor, I could not even pick it up! I had to take the afternoon off yesterday to wait for it (I know, the sacrifices I make!)

This is not a cheap machine, literally nor figuratively, but it is some amazing bang for the buck.

Good Luck in your hunt.

That was my thought process also.
The screen on the Y500 is a nice size. For a laptop. But I agree that a laptop with a 17.3 would make it that much more appealing. My biggest gripe in the laptop vs. desktop debate is that I have big, beefy hands and using the WASD keys makes my hand cramp up after a while.
I'm still not convinced that W8 is a good thing. The best part about it is that it's just like navigating my smart phone. The worst part about it is that it's just like navigating my smart phone.

Also, for some reason known only to God, Optimus Prime, and the engineers at Lenovo, the screen on the Y500 is not a touch screen. Things that make you go hmmmm . . .

Well, Kao,

Would you think it's worth installing Windows 7 on a laptop if it comes with 8? Or is 8 to the point now where it's easily workable, etc. (7 with a different wrapping?)

I ended up getting an Asus G75VW (found one on sale), and had to go with Windows 8 because for the price of the ones available with Windows 7, I could buy a nice 256GB SSD and a copy of Windows 7 and still save money.

I really tried to give Windows 8 a chance. And for the most part, I don't have any issues, but I have a new SSD and a copy of Windows 7 waiting for me to go about reinstalling.

While making sure I gather all the info and drivers, I've read a few problems about installing Windows 7 on new laptops, something about a UEFI and Secure Boot. I haven't looked into it too much since I'm soon going on a week long trip and won't bother trying to install Windows 7 until after I get back.

Thanks, read through the first post about installing Windows 7 on an 8 pre-install. Looks like everything's there as far as drivers are concerned.

I checked to see if secure boot was enabled, and it is. Will just have to make sure to disable it when I go to install Windows 7.

So is there any legitimate security reasons for manufacturers to use this secure boot, or is it pretty much just to try and force the use of the pre installed OS?