I want to buy a 17" laptop.

I don't care that they are bulky and heavy.  I'm not ready to invest in a new desktop and I want a laptop with a reasonable amount of power.  Since you can't buy a decent laptop (read: game-worthy) with anything smaller than a 17" WUXGA, I'll work with that.

Now, what makes should I be looking at?  Dell has some very reasonable configurations in their Inspiron family combined with some nice coupons makes them hard to ignore.  I know that Alienware is now part of Dell.  Does that make thier laptops any better/worse?  I understand that they are overpriced.  I was looking at some Clevos, but I have some reservations ordering a barebones system from a shoddy website using a Yahoo store front.  Is this concern well-founded or can someone point me towards a good Clevo retailer?

Suggestions welcome.  Flames too, I guess.

If you're not bothered with the amount of heat generated, get the alienware aurora, otherwise Dell's inspiron 9400/ e1705 with the 7900gs and 2 gb of ram is a good combination and if you're worried about 64 bit, some people already tried putting conroe (core2)to their inspiron 9400 and it worked right off no need to get unofficial BIOS, etc etc.