Laptop for College, help/suggestions

So Ill be going to college in the fall, and would like to pick up a laptop sometime soon. As you would expect I would like to be able to game on it.

What do you make of 15" and 17" sizes. Do you find yourself bringing a laptop to class much, as in I would enjoy 15" because of this?

Any laptop suggestions?

Im considering this vaio fw series with these specs

Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo Processor P8700 (2.53GHz), 4GB DDR2-SDRAM (DDR2-800, 2GBx2), 320GB SATA Hard Disk Drive [7200 rpm], ATI Mobility RadeonTM HD 3650 with 512MB vRAM

How does this one look? vid card good?

Any other suggestions? Thanks

budget: less than $1300

games: Fallout 3, COD 4/5, Sc2, l4d

From the specs you've mentioned that should be fine for playing the games you have said you want to play obviously you might need to look elsewhere if you want to play crisis on full spec, but as a primarily college based machine that will also play games you should be fine.

I would strongly suggest this one - Asus N51Vf-X1

Its got one of the best laptop graphics cards, should be able to handle most games you want to play.

The best part is...its only $1049 with free shipping!

thanks for the suggestions, these asus's are lookin real nice

I never suggest Sony Vaio's to my friends. They are grossly overpriced and most of the time, they fail pretty easily. Just about everyone I know who has a Vaio purchased it for the looks but the quality and performance falls short.

If you want to bring your laptop to class, I would suggest a 15.4"-15.6" or smaller notebook, nothing bigger. 17" notebooks can easily weigh more than 7lbs and I don't care how strong or muscular you are, carrying that and books around school/campus everyday is a real pain.

The Dell Studio 15 is a pretty good choice. It's a 15.6" notebook, weighs in at 5.5lbs and packs an ATI HD4570, which is an equivalent to the 8600M GT. You'll definitely be able to play games with a mid-range video card. If your looking for a quality and built-tough notebook, you should consider the business line from Dell and HP. The Dell Latitude is plenty powerful, although it's only available with the Quadro NVS160M (equivalent to the Nvidia 9300 series). The Lenovo ThinkPad is another great choice availavle with the ATI HD3650 (equivalent to 8600M GT).

If you want maximum gpu power for under $1,300, check out this MSI EX625 laptop

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152108

The HD4670 is equivalent to the Nvidia 9700M GT, which for $700 is the best deal around.