Laptop Recommendations?

Just wanted to hit on something. Intel makes a good processor but my preference is AMD. I would also say if you can use WIndows 7 (64 bit) os to go with that.  If you use the (32 bit) os you are going to be restricted to the amount of ram being recognized by the OS. WIth the 64 bit version you could virtually throw as much memory as your motherboard will support. I know my g4 year old igabyte motherboard with duo 5400 AMD 64 bit processors will take up to 16 gigs of ram on Windows 64 bit but on Windows 7 32 bit, I believe it only recognizes 4. I may be wrong. Now don't be fooled by the Windows os. Just because you have Windows 7 (64bit) does not mean that you cannot run 32 bit programs. Just the opposite is true. 32 bit applications will simply install under the program files (x86) folder and the 64 bit apps will go under the c:\program files. 

I also believe NVidia video cards with SLI work better with AMD processors. SLI is basically where you are able to bridge multiple video boards on a mother board. Some of the new boards are supporting 3 to 4 video boards under SLI. I know my son plays a lot of 3D games and he loves the SLI. Now watchout with SLI. Video cards tend to suck electricity and if you only have a 450W power adapter and you decide to install two or three Nvidia cards you need to bump up the power supply  to 650w, 700W, or 800W. I recently upgraded my power supply after I fried it and it cost me around $80 for a 650W supply. 

Gerry also hit the nail on the head with ram. The more ram you have the better and if you can add a solid state drive as the boot drive, and a hefty sata for your data drive, coupled with duo video boards and 16 gigs of ram, you pc will scream.