Hi Ya'll.
Can anyone recommend me a Laptop for under £500.
Im finding it all a bit confusing and would appreciate any input.

i hear i7 is a good processor... thats about all that i know.

oh.. and is windows 8 a good choice?

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-pavilion-g6-2230sa-15-6-laptop-ruby-red-17419991-pdt.html

I think it's quad core, has a radeon 7640G, 8gb ram, windows 8 and more.

thats looks good. thanks :) going to add that to my little list.
finding this all well confusing, lol

No problem. It looks nice, and from the specs (i have built pc's and repaired them before) i know what to look for.

With a laptop, you're not going to get as decent gaming performance as a desktop pc, but i made sure that it had a proper graphics card rather than an intel integrated chip. And a quad core is better than the dual cores that are in most laptops at lower prices. If you have any questions, ask away.

It depends what you call a "gaming" laptop, if you want "near desktop" performance then you will have look toward Asus G75 or the MSI one (forgot the name) but it's definitely a lot more than £500 (not to mention they are heavy and with a rather low battery life).

For £500 you will usually have to drastically lower the graphic quality, or play older games.

For Windows 8, it boot faster and is supposed to have a slightly better battery life so it could be a good idea for laptop.

As a rule of thumb:
Anything with an "up toxxx MB of Ram" video card - also called "Integrated Graphics is bad for gaming.

I wouldn't recommend Win 8, but that's personal choice and most of the time it's unavoidable. It will take a while until games fully run on Win 8 without difficulties. But than again it's new operating system, so neeeew games will support it better than the older versions.
As I said before: personal preference.

So, I don't know the British market but here is something I would buy with that budget after some random research:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-Blu-ray-Bluetooth-Windows-Premium/dp/B007DH9TB4/ref=sr_1_21?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1354140873&sr=1-21

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-Aspire-V3-571G-15-6-inch-Laptop/dp/tech-data/B009R15FCQ/ref=de_a_smtd

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-i5-2430M-Processor-Windows-Premium/dp/tech-data/B005XUX4Y6/ref=de_a_smtd

Ive not long got an

HP G6 (2186a i think the model number is!)
i5 core,
6gb ram,
intel 4000m graphics
and 1tb HD
win7 home premium

its currently running call of pripyat, deus ex hr, cryostasis (thanks again to klaatu for that one!), shogun 2 at full whack - no lag, crackle etc.
i do however have some savegame problems with deus ex hr - but ive confirmed thats unrelated to graphics card etc.

it also runs my older games like spellforce, x3, hard to be a god, mtw2, oblivion without problems.
i initially wanted a samsung with the same specs, same price, but the company it was ordered from messed up.

point is either would do you fine for most games
(though as always google your model number, the name of the game and the word "problems" before making a purchase!)
and should be well within the price rane - even better during january sales!

hope thats of use as a benchmark of some sort

ps: also running photoshop with realtime brush painting on a wacom at high res at decent speeds

thanks for all the help
is quad core as good as i5?

Acer Aspire V3 with i5 and GT 640M (Kepler) is the best bang for the buck in that price ratio.

to be totally honest, i mainly want to be able to play project eternity and starbound when they come out. video/audio editing and recording power would be a bonus too.
ive been grinding along playing fallout 2 and arcanum and a bunch of other GOGs on a notebook. its been great but its time to up my game a little.

i5 is a quad core processor = a processor with 4 processor cores

an i7 starts with four cores but can have up to six but it can do other nifty yet unimportant things like multi-threading.
Multi-threadings sounds pretty cool, but is rather useless when playing games.

Gameplaywise an i5 is your best bet.

depends on the core - ive got an i5 3210m (more specifically) which when i checked against other cores on some geek sites, it compared favourably to quite a few.

it IS a dual core - but has some hyper threading or something which does... something - ive no idea right now but ill look tomorrow after some snooze and try to be more clear!

of course if you have the money / opportunity, then an i7 quad would probably be better - but for your price range (and a prebuilt laptop!) then you could do a lot worse.

you could always see about a custiom build otherwise


EDIT:
@K4m1k4z3
my previous laptop was an aspire (do miss using it actually) - VERY good value, but i found some component compatability problems with a lot of games that were coming out.

Then how come the ones i've seen say dual core?

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/sony-vaio-e-series-sve1512m1ew-cek-laptop-white-17056565-pdt.html
I already found the best bang for buck earlier in the thread. Check the page out in the link.

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/best_gaming_laptop/post2

i3 is dual core.
i5 is dual core with HyperThreading, 2 physical cores, 4 logical cores.
i7 is quad core with HyperThreading, 4 physical cores, 8 logical cores.
i7 extreme is hexacore with HyperThreading, 6 physical cores, 12 logical cores.
I hope I recall the number of cores correctly.