I think I'll hop on the bandwagon with this one; I, personally, use a laptop for everything, but that's because I'm a student and couldn't afford a laptop for school and a desktop for gaming. Desktops really are the way to go, because they're generally super-cheap, even the fairly good ones (Alienwares just happen to light up, don't be fooled), and it's easy to open them up and upgrade/replace/repair. There are some really awesome gaming laptops out there, but they usually weigh a ton and have middle-line graphics capability. If you're going to buy a laptop, make sure you know what the graphics card's capable of - does it have pixel shading? Transform and lighting? And does the computer have enough RAM and a good clock speed? With a desktop, you can usually upgrade. With a laptop, you're generally better off buying a new one.