Since I wholesale laptop and parts for so many years, I do upgrade often I'll admit and for gaming I do prefer a desktop but the laptops now are so fast that they run games with incredible speed and graphics. My laptops at work are more business end and at home I use it for working, blogging, music, internet, web design, photoshop work, benchmarking test's and my son will use it more for what it was made for, gaming. I have seen WOW, half life, starcraft 2 and it runs microsoft xbox 360 PC games without a problem. The machine runs faster then any desktop I currently own and the video card and screen are crystal clear. For $1600 I could get you one of the most high end laptops available and even for less then $800 I just got 10 asus g50vt-x5 and the specs are more than enough for any user, out of the box it is G50VT-X5 - Asus 2.13Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo P7450, 4GB DDR2, 320GB HD, Vista Home Premium, 15.6" Laptop System, built-in 1.3 megapixel webcam, 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9800M GS, custom case, light up case, new, warranty. Just to give you an idea on what you can get... only a apple macbook pro will cost you around $1600 but i never got into macs so i dont know why.