I am temporarily back from the land of silence to get your opinion on a laptop I'm looking at. Those fuckers at Geek Squad couldn't fix my computer and scratched the hell out of my case, so I'm taking it to some real professionals, IT people who work at my parent's workplace. In the meantime, I have college to consider, and looking around, I've seen a laptop that looks like the perfect system; the Alienware m11x. With 8.5 hours of battery life and a powerful NVIDIA card inside, along with a great price, it looks pretty sweet, but I still want to go over the specs of the custom build I would choose, were I to buy it, and see whether it is worth it.
Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 1.3 GHz (3MB Cache)
4GB RAM
250 GB HD
1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 335M
11.6 inch WLED screen
Internal High-Definition Surround Sound Audio (5.1)
1.3 MP Web Cam
Integrated 10/100 Network Interface Card
One thing of note is that Bluetooth is an extra $20. Would Bluetooth be worth it, and is this laptop a good buy?

Check this site out for laptop graphics card comparisions, higher up the list the better the graphics card generally.
[url=]http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html[/url]

seems like a pretty sweet laptop to me :). Too bad of the small screen (but you can always hook it up to a bigger one, right?) and the lack of optical drive.
Do the reviews you've read mention anything about the heat/noise the laptop generates?

MW2 isn't very demanding, and COD4 even less so.
BC2 is very demanding and I can tell you right now that the laptop in question here cannot run it at high settings. I have a GT240M with a significantly better processor and I can't run it at high settings. The GT330M is basically a higher clocked GT240M.
It's a medium range video card that's acceptable. Laptops with ATI cards in that range generally deliver more bang for the buck though. The ATI Radeon HD5650 can be found in similar priced laptops and is better for gaming.
Although what kills the deal is that processor. An SU on a "gaming" rig? Ludicrous. Fair enough, many games don't require that much processor power. Just be warned that the processor will be the bottleneck in the system for all applications, gaming and other tasks alike. It's a netbook processor for crying out loud.

Yeah, you can use an external monitor, and it has many ports to do so, including an HDMI. No reviews mention noise or heat, so I'm guessing it does all that well.

Another thing is that you might be able to buy it tax free through your college. I'm not sure how it works in the states, but that makes a hell of a difference here.

Heat & noise are likely to be within acceptable levels for a powerful laptop. That means moderately noisy and warm to the touch rather than having to use an eggflip to get your hand off the palm rest (its not a HP after all).
What are your cpu upgrade options? I think that'll be your only real issue with that system. I'd personally suggest nothing less than 2Ghz, I'm using a 1.66 core 2 duo and it is pretty good but it struggles with some games. Core2Duo's have a pretty good power saving mode, my 17" gets 4 hours with medium brightness and with the wireless network card off (well it has to be now that I broke it).
Are you really going to be using the system for 8 straight hours and NOT have access to a power point? Personally I think it's better to sacrifice battery life for computational power, you can plug it into the wall most any time and its way better to have a good laptop that can be inconvenient for power than to have one that lasts forever but struggles to do the tasks you want

I'm sorry to hijack your topic, but it seemed kind of dumb to make a second "help guyz!" thread about laptop-purchasing.
What do you guys think about the next laptop. It's mostly for visual studio .NET, development and the occasional game (tales of monkey island, everything on GOG, ... - nothing to heavy, maybe DoW2 or something). It needs to be a notebook, as I'm often on the road.
Sony VAIO VPCEA1S1E (E Series)
14 inch
Processor: IC i3-330M
RAM: 4GB
HD: 500 GB (I will probably replace this with an SSD)
DVD, wireless, ...
ATI Mobility Radeon HD5145
It's going to be around 800 euros, which is about the maximum I'm willing to spend.
(again, sorry for the hijack!)

It's a Sony, which IMO is the Apple of PCs. Good quality builds, i3 which is okay if you're not after a gaming rig or anything, will do nicely. Graphics-wise, it's okay. Not GREAT but it will be fine for your needs.

While some of the websites said it could dip in a few games, almost all of the comments and reviews from people who have bought the laptop claim it eats up anything they throw at it. That may partially have to do with the screen size and resolution, which manages to make games look good without max specs.
Another thing to consider is that for the next four years of my life, I'll be a college student. I won't exactly have barrels of cash to buy new PC games. Anything that can run the games currently out well will be fine for me. The games I would want to play on it are all supported (Capcom's games especially score well, with Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter IV hitting averages of 120 FPS), and unlike most other people, I am perfectly content with an 11 inch screen. Hell, it even runs HD videos well at the lower power setting!

Yeah, waaay overpriced, pretty much as to be expected from Alienware. I got a new laptop myself about 4 months ago (one of the ones Newegg was selling at the time); it had pretty similar specs to the one you're considered (a bit better processor, bit larger screen, and a bit weaker GPU), and went for right around $600. Definitely shop around other suppliers, as for $1000 you could get something much better than what you're currently considering.

BUT IT'S ALIENWARE AND THINGS GLOW IN THE DARK!!!!!!!!!

The 320M is pretty much comparable to the 330M. They're both based on exactly the same technology, only the 330M has a slightly higher clock speed. The processor is among the very best available on any laptop, a quad-core i7 that dynamically adjusts itself accoring to load, acting either as a quad 1.6 GHz, duo 2.1 GHz, or solo 2.8 GHz. It also has hyperthreading, giving you 4 "virtual" cores in addition to the 4 physical and hence the ability to run 8 threads pseudo-simultaneously.
I'm guessing the low battery time is due to not turning off (or not being able to turn off) the video card, as it consumes quite a lot of power even when basically idle. You should check up whether the computer also has an integrated graphics chip that can be switched to and fro based on whether you need increased battery time or not. Additionally, the processor can be configured to run in either performance or energy-saving mode.
Two hours of battery time isn't exceptionally low if running in performance mode while still browsing, in fact it's the standard on such laptops. Battery time is ultimately not a design concern on gaming/professional-oriented laptops, really. You can't have the best of both worlds at such a low price.

That would be a decent gaming computer for most games to my knowledge except like the new AVP and Bad Company 2. Those games make my quad-core beg for mercy. For a laptop that's a decent one, bluetooth would be handy if you want to use bluetooth accessories. Up to you on that as I'm not you and don't know what accessories you want to or will use so you need to figure that out on your own. The battery life, is that on power save mode? I don't think it would last 8 hours playing an intensive 3d game and could be an advertisement gig.
By the way what kind of OS comes with this laptop? Win7 would run ok with that CPU but XP would run really fast.