Recomendations?

Since my current laptop is on it's last legs, I'm looking for a new one. This is the one I have my eye on right now: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220668 I'm relatively incompetent when it comes to computers, so what I'd like to know is will this suit my needs for City of Heroes and possibly Aion down the line? Are there things I should improve? I'm trying not to spend too much more than this.

Thanks for your help in advance

In m opinion, I like everything except the processor, (2.0ghz). Quad isn't necessary or utilized unless you are doing many other things at the same time as gaming, or using more than one account at the same time, so you'd be better off with a higher speed duo for the same price.. or at least a higher speed anything regardless, if possible.

Okay, what about this one instead?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834101203

Edit: this is in reference to your first choice.

I agree it's a very nice system overall. One of the things that is making it a tad expensive is the Blu-ray drive, I'm assuming that choice is intentional, along with a 1080P, 17" screen and the 7200RPM, twin hard drives (yes not one 1TB but two 500MB, don't think it's RAID 0 ). Plus there is likely a premium because it's classified by Asus as a "gamer laptop". If money isn't an issue, go for it.

Acting as a devil's advocate to Master-Blade, we are likely to see more and more games in the future designed to use as many cores as are on a system. But it will be slower on older games than a faster dual core.

Yes, Blu-ray drives can read DVDs. I'm guessing it will also burn DVDs but I can't find any info on that.

Here is a review of a variant of that Asus system. Only differences I see are a pair of 320GB drives instead of 500GB and a lower resolution 1600x900 screen, still 17".

This Asus at NewEgg is similar to the reviewed one, is $300 cheaper than your original choice, no Blu-ray, no backback and gamer mouse and only 640GB in a pair of 7200RPM drives.

The Gateway system does have a faster dual core processor, only 4GB but faster DDR3 memory, a slower, smaller 5400RPM hard drive and a screen with a much lower resolution, 1440x900. The upside of a lower resolution screen is the 260M has less pixels to push around which should provide a better framerate. But in a world of 1600x900 or 1920x1080 laptops it may feel small.

I would like to note here that in desktop PC terms the 260M is essentially a 9800GT. Nice to find in a laptop but not anywhere as powerful as the similarly sounding GTX 260 card you can get for a desktop. Curse you nVidia marketing idiots.

You might also want to look at this Asus.

In general, you need to consider what you need / want. Physical screen size (15"-ish or 17"-ish)? Resolution (1440x900, 1920x1080)? FPS / frame rate (with the same video card, the higher-res screen will run slower, since it has to handle more pixels; physical size doesn't have any real effect on FPS)?

For most current and near-future games, including CoH, you're considerably better off with a faster dual core than a slower quad. It looks like in this price / feature range you're looking at about a 2-ish GHz quad or a 2.5-ish GHz dual; the 2.5-ish GHz dual is probably a better choice for CoH unless you're trying to run multiple other things with it (which is not generally a good idea on a laptop).