What would a good laptop be in the 1k-1.5k range? I need one for college and I'd like it to play WoW, Company of Heroes, and Battlefield 2142 very smoothly.
there's an hp with a 7600, 2 gigs of ram, and a core 2 duo at 1.8 ghz or something like that, its about 1200... that should do everything just fine... better than what you have now actually.... lol
If you'll be gaming make sure to get something with a dedicated gpu so you can have good graphics. Stay away from integrated and turbocached/hypermemory cards as they are a lot weaker. Video cards in laptops are tough to get a good one so make this your first priority. Go with a radeon x1600/nvidia 7600 or higher and you will not be disappointed.
Even though it's ugly as sin (I would definately choose the "standard grey without graphic" over any of the lame graphics that they put on it)!
You also might check and see what kind of discount (if any) you can get on the OS through the college that you are attending. Sometimes you can get stuff for stupidly cheap through the University's computer store (I've heard rumors about $5 versions of XP at some schools.... like Indiana University?). Anyway, if you can get a substantial discount on the OS, then with CyberpowerPC, you could choose the "format drive only" option, save $83, and put the operating system on yourself. I don't think that is an option with big companies (Dell, HP, etc.).
That's probably what I will do at least. I configured one the other day with...
C2D 2.0 gHz (T7200)
100 GB (7200 RPM HD)
1 GB RAM (DDR2-667)
No OS