[masterofweirdness]

Money is a big factor... give us some economic limits on what your parents are willing to spend...

Also, the 17in screen is HUGE. I didn't realize how big 17" was until I saw it... make sure you know that... its not that mobile, IHMO.

Second off... XP... XP is well... its better than Vista, but, sadly, Vista is the way of the future... if you are buying a new Laptop you probably will save money by getting Vista, and if you want a gaming laptop, then you want DirectX 10, which only runs on Vista. I don't like Vista, but since its pretty hard to get XP I got it...

Second off... hard drive? Mine has 240 gigs and its already half-way full... I didn't realize how much space I would use... once again, if you want a gaming laptop, get a big harddrive or an external harddrive... you can easily get one of those I bet.

Other than that... it all sounds good, Geforce 8 is a must, and if you can get it, as much as 4 gigs of ram is always a good thing... other than that... its all good.

Ya... thats all that...

Oh, one more tip... Alienware has a nice 15.4" Laptop now... which can be made pretty good for around $2000... I think its worth the money.... being alienware and all that.