ya, plan on carrying around a car battery for additional power.

Im in the market for a new gaming laptop….Im starting to save now, i think I’ll scrape together enough (plus parents) to get a really nice gaming laptop.

so far

alienware
voodoo
hypersonic
acer
sager

any recommendations?

budget is around 2500-3000

Alienware laptop- probably best for your price range?
http://alienware.com/product_detail_pages/Area-51m/area-51m_features.aspx?SysCode=PC-LT-AREA51-M&SubCode=SKU-EXTREME

also, wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to check out/customize a dell gaming laptop
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspn_xps?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

i think Ibuypower is also OK… haven’t dome research on this for a while (i was looking for a thin and lite)

All I can tell you is: Do NOT get Alienware!!!

There are too many horror stories floating on the web about this company and their laptops. I was planning on getting an Alienware laptop at one point until I did a search on them. The Area-51M laptop seems to be the one everyone has problems with.

Here are a couple of reviews on it. You can come to your own decision
about it:

http://reviews.cnet.com/Alienware_Area_51m/4852-3121_7-20857400.html?tag=tab

http://str8dog.com/articles/182.aspx

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,110976,00.asp

There are, of course, a lot of good reviews on it. The problem seems to come with age, however. Use it for a couple of months and things seem to break down for no apparent reason.

whatever you buy, buy a giant ice pak also. you’re gonna need it. unless you like starting fires.

Heh, I have two friends with Alienware laptops, they’re pretty good for games.  Don’t play on getting a desktop processor and graphics cards and playing any games without it plugged in though, battery life will turn to like 20 seconds.