The subject for this post might be slightly misleading, because  the main purpose of the laptop I'm buying is NOT gaming.  I'm going back to school (at 30....yay?) and figured it would be nice to have something a bit more portable then my PC to do work on.  I also work in marketing for an engineering firm, so I will definetly be using the laptop for that. Thing is, all I really need for those applications is a web browser, microsoft suite, photoshop and indesign.  I also write and like to mess around on game maker, but most laptops I buy will be able to handle all of these things.

I'm not looking to do serious gaming on this thing.  I've got a good gaming rig for that.  I would like something that could handle games decently, though, because why not?  I'm looking for something under 700 dollars that I can play Starcraft II, Star Wars The Old Republic, and Warcraft on with a good frame rate at medium to high settings.  Nothing too ground breaking.  I also play a lot of emulators and indie games, but they don't tend to be very system intensive.  Besides that all I think I'll play are some of my Steam games (like the Batman Arkham games and the Mass Effect trilogy, once again, not bleeding edge.)

I was thinking of buying the following:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B7JE6G2/ref=s9_simh_gw_p147_d2_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=144DYCAZ8Y5XKNXA0FAG&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1389517282&pf_rd_i=507846

So, thoughts?

Well.
If a laptop can play games, it sure as hell can do everything else.
However that laptop has a Geforce GT 730M which is equivalent to a Desktop Geforce GT 630, aka. - Horribly slow and a re-branded Geforce GT 440.

I suggest this: http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-59345759-Z585-15-6-Inch-Laptop/dp/B009AEPS4K/ref=sr_1_6?m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1368017372&sr=1-6

Much better build quality than the Acer, faster GPU, slightly slower CPU (2.3ghz base clock, turbos to a max of 3.2ghz on 1 core.), longer battery life.
And still got a horrible 1366x768 screen which is less than what I had 15 years ago on my Desktop, but in that price range you probably can't do much better screen-wise.

Also, Photoshop/Indesign can leverage the GPU for some tasks too, making the CPU that little bit less important.

Buy an SSD, drop in some faster Ram (APU's love fast Ram, AMD Trinity supports 1866mhz modules, oems usually throw in 1333mhz modules.) and enjoy.

Oh and it's a little cheaper which is also a plus in my opinion. :)

Thanks for the insite!

Are you for real?

GT730M is in a way "rebranded" GT640M (with a bit higher clocks than the latter) and since both cards are based on NEW Keplar architecture, they have absolutely nothing in common with GT440.

I would definitely go with Acer out of the two. Much better CPU, and much better VGA than what's integrated into the APU.

Don't worry about the resolution since you'll get better fps on lower one :P

There are two Geforce GT 730M and because laptop manufacturers don't disclose what core it is, it's best to think of it as a worst-case-scenario, rather than gambling with hundreds of dollars and hoping for the best.

If it does have a Geforce GT730M with the GK208 core then it's a rebranded Desktop Geforce GT 635.
If it's the 730M with the GK107 core then it's a rebranded Desktop Geforce 630.
nVidia also shrank some Geforce 630's that use Fermi (Geforce 440) down to 28nm.

Actually GK208 is a new core, also Keplar based. And since the card was released 1. April, and the notebook in January, I'm quite confident that the GPU in it, is the "older" GT730M.

730M with GK107 is more of a Desktop 640. (Since the core is 384:32:16)

GK107 is also 192:16:16, half the shaders.