Computers!

[NabMaster]

I didn't want to start spamming up the Saying Hi thread with all of my computer stuff, so I'm throwing it all in here. I've been looking into Dell and Alienware computers (I'm looking for one to game on, so I wasn't sure the others you recommended would work Josiah), and I've come up with this for Dell, coming to $1439.
In comparison, the Alienware laptop I'm looking at has a 320GB hard drive that runs at 7200 RPM and has free-fall protection. The graphics card is a 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870. The alienware laptop also has a cooling fan and a glowing keyboard, coming to $2,007.

This is a pretty big leap, so is the faster hard drive and the better video card worth the extra $560?

[Josiah]

Apple is useless for serious gaming, of course. But any brand that lets you customize their systems can work if you put in the right hardware. If you're a really serious PC gamer you can never have too good of a graphics card, though I don't think that alone is worth the extra cash (seeing as you could probably find a Dell that would let you upgrade to a higher card for less). The faster hard drive, while nice, probably wouldn't make much of a difference for gaming, they're most useful for heavy duty graphic design or movie making/editing.

[NabMaster]

Well I just found an even better Dell laptop, the two I was looking at before were both 15.4" screens, this one is 16". The other two had 320GB hard drives, but this one is 500GB for $50 more - pretty good I think. Here are the specs, the graphics card is a 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3670, weaker than the Alienware's 3870, but it's still better than the other Dell one. This comes to $1769, I think that's a pretty decent price.

[PoikSpirit]

Personally, all the laptops in my house are Lenovo. It's the brand that's worked the best for us. We've always had best success with desktops with HP (and NEVER get an e-Machine (just in my opinion)). But you want a gaming computer. You'd have to upgrade any Lenovo to be able to use it, as far as I know. We haven't had a computer in our house that could play any of my yard sale FPS's...
I think it's usually just the video card. I'm more of a console gamer pretty much for that reason.

Dell got better after they bought out Alienware, but I used to never find a satisfied customer with Dell until Josiah really.

[Josiah]

Dell used to be the best of the best a while back, then they slipped a bit (outsourcing their tech support to India was part of that), then they recovered a bit. Now they're one of the better ones, though not as good as they used to be. Actually, my biggest complaint with Dell was that they used the horrible DHL to ship smaller packages. But now DHL's US branch has gone out of business so that's no longer a problem.

Lenovo (formally IBM) has always been solid, they just don't make good systems for gaming.