Looking for Advice on Laptops

I'm looking to buy a laptop sometime toward the end of summer, and I just wanted some pointers on what to look for or where to go.  Also, what sort of price range I should be looking at given the stuff that I want to do with it.

I'm looking to get a lappy since I want to start taking notes with it at school next term. 
I know once I purchase a laptop, it's gonna become my main computer.  That means I'll probably want it to run games (CS Source, Dawn of War, C&C First Decade, etc.).  I don't need anything mind-blowing but I'd just like it to be powerful enough to at least be able to run these games really well (as a perk).
I know it'd be better if I got a tower for gaming, but I don't want to take up any extra space in my room with a desk.  Portability is the main reason I'm looking at a lappy since I WOULD want to take it to school. So I definitely wouldn't want anything too heavy or too big (I'm not picky about screen size really). A respectable battery life would be nice as well.

I'm hoping to spend less than $1500 CDN.  Anyone got any suggestions/pointers? Laptop advice? I'm new to the laptop thing.

Choose either one of these: Portability or Gaming ability. For gaming:Dell XPS m1701 (17" wide, 3.4kg without the charger), basically almost all 17" widescreen DTR laptops. Portability: Liberetto series, Sony TX
The lowest gfx card that you should accept is geeforce 7200 or X1400, with at least 128mb Local memory, none of that hyper memory or turbo cache shit. 1GB of ram should be minimum. 80gb+ hdd should minimum also. Look for either the centrino/core(solo/duo)/Pentium M badge or the turion badge. You'll have to sacrifice portability if you want to be able to play certain games (I'm assuming you wont be playing FEAR,Oblivion).

I was looking at an Area-51 m5500 from Alienware. I was playing around with the configurations and I could get it within my price range if I didn't go crazy. It would look something like this ...

Intel® Pentium® M 760 2.0GHz 2MB L2 Cache 533MHz FSB
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 533MHz - 2 x 512MB 
60GB 5400 RPM ATA100
256MB NVidia® GeForce™ Go MXM 6600

I MIGHT go with 80gb on the HD but I'm pretty satisfied with just the 60GB I'm working with currently anyway. Would I still be able to upgrade some things at some point in the future, such as the RAM or processor? Would it be safe to say that if I could upgrade in the future, I would only be able to do it within the configurations that they currently have set at their website for the m5500? Or am I stuck with what I have forever with a laptop?

>>2
>>3
Fail for Dell.

>>1 Under $1500? No way.
http//www.newegg.com/...
The above is a list of pre-made machines that don't have shit graphics cards.

Since you're gonna take it to school almost daily, you really should go with a 14'' or 15'' display. Even 15.4'' is too big, speaking from experience here.

And yeah, Dell has only meh graphics cards afaik.

go back to /comp/

shit graphics cards? Why would I get a 128mb ATI X700 on those Dells when I could get a 256mb GeForce?  Also, I've looked around and if I go smaller than the 15.4" m5500 Alienware is offering, I wouldn't be able to play games as much.  For the size, price, and power so far, the m5500 seems to be the way to go. http//www.alienware.com/...
(Just realized that the Alienware site always shows US dollars even though I clicked Canada for region selection... so my prices are a bit off. But it's still not as bad given the strong CDN dollar right now. My friend might even be able to get a deal for me since Alienware is one of the sponsers for his videogame company.)

Oh, and sorry. I didn't notice that there was a 'Computers' board. My bad.

256mb GeForce WHAT? There should have been more options in that list than an X700, BTW.

256MB NVidia® GeForce™ Go MXM 6600

go back to fucking /comp/ you morons