Laptop advice

My fellow heroes and villains, Statesman has smiled upon me and Lord Recluse has turned a blind eye. I rejoice for I have been granted a work bonus for the real life work that I've done and I plan to use it to secure a better vehicle for playing this wonderful game!

My thinking is that for anything I would want to do on a laptop, if it can run CoH/V well, it will do anything else too. So, my big problem is that I'm at a loss for what to do. The last laptop I purchased was in 2003 (which can play CoH at the lowest possible settings... barely). This must be rectified!

I would ask for the considered help of my quite knowledgable peers. If you had $1000 as your budget (give or take a few hundred), what would YOU buy? Are there any sales or deals I should be watching for? Should I wait until the next major holiday? I have a friend who's a student if I need to use a student discount.

Feature-wise, the bigger and heavier the better. If I had to get a laptop backpack that dragged on the ground, great! I don't like little screens, little keyboards, or anything like that. I want a power process (NOT a Celeron), non-integrated graphics (of course), minimum 3 GB Ram (4+ better), but size of hard drive is NOT important. I'm using an 80 now and that actually works just fine so a 200 or whatever is sufficient (I don't need 500 etc).

I did like my Dell because it had a keyboard that has the keys in the right order (home page up, page down, etc) but I can live with a goofy keybaord that hides keys if I have to (as long as it's not a toshiba where you have to hunt for the danged windows key!).

I like the idea of a warranty if it's a good one that covers all normal wear and tear and power surges, but nothing shorter than 3 years or it's pretty much a waste to pay extra.

So if you would like to take my challenge and help a colleague out, let the suggestions begin! Thank you all!

Well, the first problem is that a Laptop generate a lot of heat while doing graphic intense work so you might consider also purchasing a laptop pad with a cooler unit. When it come down to laptops for gaming I'm not that great with advices. Any laptop with a graphic card better then nvidia 9400, at least 4 gigs of ram (preferably dd3 ram) and a core 2 duo processor should suffice your needs.

Because of that it's hard to max out a laptop (cooling and placement issues) you might get greatly capped in power ability while not choosing a desktop solution.
I hear a lot of good talk about playing WoW on the new Macbook Pro and CoX should have similar hardware requirements. Any laptop with similar configuration should be enough. Alienware though expensive are always quality and good for gaming IMO.

CoX runs great on my Mac Mini late 2009. Just a note; be picky with the cooling abilities. Lots of laptop users (including myself back in 2008 when I owned a Zepto Znote 6324W laptop) who play games encounter a lot of issues with the temperatures. It's not that fun when your computer constantly shuts down because it can't shut out enough heat to keep it running because of bad cooling factors.

Here's some to get you started:

http://computers.toptenreviews.com/g...16-review.html

http://computers.toptenreviews.com/g...x-details.html

http://computers.toptenreviews.com/g...z-details.html

http://computers.toptenreviews.com/g...u-details.html

http://computers.toptenreviews.com/g...h-details.html

http://computers.toptenreviews.com/g...0-details.html

I guess I spoke too soon on the Toshibas.... That Quasimo has a keyboard with ten-key that has the buttons all in the right places! Neato!