Octopus Overlords

I am looking for a good gaming laptop, and affordable. Not like the alienwares that cost a bunch. Thanks a lot in advance!

Generically you'd want as much RAM as you can get (1 GB would be peachy) and the best video card possible. If you're playing any newer games, the video card is going to be the stumbling block, especially since you can't upgrade it in a laptop. If you're going for older, or strategy games, this is not as much of a consideration.

One site which I have had recommended to me, but don't have actual experience with, is www.powernotebooks.com - they sell what can be considered "generic" laptops. Turns out most laptops are made by just a few companies, and people like Dell, Gateway, etc, relabel them. Powernotebooks gets the generic ones directly, so the cost is gonna be a bit cheaper than the name brands. That said, you should frequent www.gotapex.com because they often point out good deals on Dell laptops.

Anything with a Radeon 9600 or GeForce 5700 should be pretty good for gaming. If you don't want to spend a bunch of money, there are some options out there. I have an eMachines 6805 that I really like for $1200. I also recently bought a Dell 8600 for just under $1000. I have a comparison that I'm writing up but haven't posted it, yet. I'll summarize the two systems for you as I think either would be a good, inexpensive, gaming laptop.

eMachines 6805 (current moddel is the 6811, I believe).

Athlon 64 3000+
512 meg ram
64 meg ATI Radeon 9600
60 gb harddrive
DVD/CDRW
15.4" Widescreen 1280x800 resolution
4 usb, 1 firewire, 6 in 1 media reader, vga, svideo, parrallel

Dell 8600
Pentium M 1.6
512 meg ram
128 meg Redeon 9600 Pro Turbo
60gb hard drive
DVD/CDRW
15.4" widescreen 1680x1080 screen
2 usb, 1 firewire, vga, svideo

For gaming alone, I would go with the eMachines. It has louder speakers, it's a little faster for gaming (not by much but a few hundred points in 3dmark and the current model has a 3200 processor). The Athlon 64 is a much better gaming processor. Additionally, the eMachines is generally cheaper than Dell under normal prices. I got a $750 off coupon on mine so it was cheaper. As a desktop replacement, the eMachines is also a winner due to the extra ports and the Athlon 64.

If you are going to be using the laptop on battery power, I'd go with the Dell (or any pentium M based laptop with a 9600 or better video card). The eMachines battery life is good (about 3 hours) but the Dell gets 4-5 hourse of battery life. The dell is also just a little bit smaller and lighter (about half a pount and .1" smaller).

Overall, they are both great machines and each has it's strengths. If the Dell had more ports, it would be a better DTR. If you can afford a faster pentium M, it would also make a better gaming machine since the video card IS faster.

Some other laptops to look at are the Gateway 675 and their new 6805 clone. I always liked the gateway 505x series but that seems to have been discontinued.

I just go the Dell Inspiron 8600 listed above but with 1 GB of RAM. I'm running NWN and RCT3 on it and everything looks great. I have to turn some details down but that's to be expected.