Hey, im looking at buying a laptop but dont know where to start.. I have really no idea about them at all. They all seem slow as hell and very costly but what i want is something that i can take to my friends and file share/play games. So its gotta be easy to hook up with other computers and run games at a good speed.

Any feedback would be great, thanks.

heres some advice, LAPTOPS ARE NOT FOR GAMING

from the scenario u have just described, a laptop is NOT for you, AT ALL

what u need is a shuttle pc [like a small lil pc in a cube box, about the size of a shoebox if u squeeze it into a cube] theyre cheap too, and with the money u save over the laptop, u can buy an lcd monitor to make transporting it to ur friends easy as pie, in the end, with the flat panal monitor, it might come out to be a lil more expensive, but it will be FAR better then a laptop can ever be in speed, usability, UPGRADEABILITY, and just about everything else, and hey, once ive used it for years and upgraded it enough times, u can take it apart and use the parts in other copmuters, something u cant do with a laptop

buying a laptop is like buying a bad stock, a bad expensive stock, that will only go down in value and theres nothing u can do about it, whereas buying a [custom] pc is like buying a stock where putting a few dollars in every once in a while will keep its value up.

anyhow, a friend of mine is buying of thems soon, so if u want, i can ask him how he's going to go about doing it

but for now, go to newegg.com and tigerdirect.com

yea something like that, it doesnt have to be by Falcon Northwest but thats a REAL good place to get one, u can of course build one urself but its kinda of difficult because of the size of the box.

if i had the cash, i would get a frag box, especially, if ur PRIMARY function would be gaming at places outside of ur home

There is sth u can't do with a shuttle PC. You can't harm ur fertility with it as u can do with a laptop Remember the post in the news board a while ago? "Laptops carry risk to fertility"

(This is an absolutely serious/helpful reply)

so wait, was that a good or bad thing?

After going down a similar road 3 years ago I can tell you that if you want that kind of laptop then you're just going to end up buying something that's 3-5kgs and thus, not really a "laptop". Desktop replacement laptops are just not worth it.

But still, Toshiba's Qosmio line is I think your best bet since it comes with a GeForce Go5700 (128MB) and is well equpped, but expect to pay a high price for it and maybe one day slip a disc.