What New Laptop To Get

[Arius]

Hey. I need a laptop for college this fall and my dad and i are planning on going later this week to look around. i personally don't have a clue what to get and i don't really trust my father to either. i know what i would like out of it however:

-normal Microsoft type programs (word, excel, etc)
-plenty of memory
-good enough gaming computer for Steam games (Left 4 Dead and Half Life in particular)

we were looking at Dells, but past that i'm not sure what kind of specs a college kid needs in his laptop, especially if i want to be able to take my 15 some game library with me. thanks for any help and advice!

EDIT: price tag is probably around 700 at most, if i remember correctly

 

[foothead]

Whats your budget?
Laptops usually aren't very good for gaming, but older games will work fine on it.
Oh nd you will have to buy Microsoft Office. There are very few computers that come with it pre-installed.

 

[01001010]

Dell Studio 15

HP ProBook 4510s

HP Compaq 6730s

These aren't gaming notebooks, but they should get you through college. At that price range, you're not going to get a well balanced gaming notebook. You might be able to find some notebooks with a dedicated graphics card within your price range, but be prepared to sacrifice mobility and battery life.

 

[Arius]

these are the gaming "requirements" i'm kinda looking for. this is my big game, and anything else i play (as of now) would be below this.

Minimum:
Supported OS: Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / Vista64
Processor: Pentium 4 3.0GHz
Memory: 1 GB
Graphics: 128 MB, Shader model 2.0, ATI 9600, NVidia 6600 or better
Hard Drive: At least 7.5 GB of free space
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
Recommended:

Supported OS: Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / Vista64
Processor: Intel core 2 duo 2.4GHz
Memory: 1 GB
Graphics: Shader model 3.0, NVidia 7600, ATI X1600 or better