The time has come.  Last year some jackass broke into my house and stole my PC that I'd been using since 2004 when Half-Life 2 came out.  Ever since I've been using a Mac laptop that is so ancient it can barely run Minecraft and Firefox at the same time.  Now I'm looking to get a new PC.

I keep hearing about these Toshiba Qosmio laptops being super-amazing, but they're a little expensive.  I'm also wondering if they're just overkill, and if I can't get something with 90% of the power for 70% of the price.  Maybe I could get one refurbished?  I kinda don't really know what I'm talking about here, and since a sucker and his money are soon parted, I thought I'd turn to you guys for help before I blow my money on a bad deal.

So far I've saved up $1,100 to work with.  I'm seeing laptops that blow my 2004 computer away for half the price, but since I haven't bought a computer since 2004, everything looks awesome to me.  I think I had half a gig of RAM and then I updated it to a single gig later...

So basically..... I'm looking for a PC laptop that can really really kick ass at Portal 2 and StarCraft 2.  Other than that I'll mostly be playing older games and flash games, with some browsing and photo/video editing, but I might get a fancy new PC game every once in a while.  Would it make more sense to get a really really good laptop, or get a pretty good one and then upgrade the video card myself?

I was planning on waiting for Black Friday, but it also looks like the Mac is dying faster than expected.  I've already replaced the battery once and the power adapter twice, and it's getting old and weary and I don't want to spend another dime keeping the thing alive.

Anybody know any good PC laptops for $1,100 or so?  What gives me the most bang for that kind of buck?  I can probably spend $1,500 max on this thing if I have to.

In preparation I'm buying BioShock for $5 on Steam right now.  I heard it was neat.

Thanks for any recommendations and/or advice in advance!

Is there a specific reason you'd want a gaming laptop, as desktops offer a lot more for the money?

You have to make a decision between being able to play games, and having a battery life measured in hours.

Laptops with a discrete graphics card (by the way you can't upgrade graphics cards yourself in a laptop) will be expensive, heavy and may have battery lives of half an hour when playing. Laptops without will be light, portable and less expensive.

SC2 and Portal 2 will likely need a discrete. If you do go for discrete it is important to get AMD Mobility Radeon 36xx and up/46xx and up/56xx and up or Nvidia Geforce 9600 and up / GT 130 and up / GT 220 and up / GT 315 and up / GT 420 and up. That's all the cards with 320 and 48 shaders respectively.

Have you considered buying a desktop (they are much cheaper for what you get) for gaming, and an ultraportable for the battery life? It would come to a similar total to a gaming laptop but you get both aspects and also the desktop will handle any amount of new games.

I'd too suggest a desktop for home/gaming and a light laptop/netbook if you need to carry one around. You can upgrade the desktop quite a bit during the years to come, plus the more powerful gaming laptops I've seen are more movable than they are portable.

Asus G73jh

There are actually great deals at dell copun codes available especially if you subcribe to their email list, you can do that now.

Dell.ca has a deal on for 1100 for gt 430m 2gb video card, i7 etc. Not sure if that deal is only available at dell.ca, also believe you have to subscribe to the newsletter to get that deal. Hope you find the perfect deal.

This could be a good option for $899

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834146848

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5855&p=2

Plays Left 4 Dead 2 @ 60FPS average so it ought to do well, only main con is 768P resolution.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220827

Asus option

Or something like this for $1100 which has a better screen and performance but the performance in games would be about the same given the fact it has a higher resolution screen

etc?