well, I kept doing ALOT of reading, comparing specs for the machines suggested here that were in my price range, and since I have been gaming on a high end desktop PC I decided I'd like to be able to play the Half-Life 2 series on my laptop. Any current or recent laptops that can do that (and have passed the reviews) is priced too high for me, but I came across something on eBay that may well be the answer (and for cheap). They said it was lightly used, like-new, and since it had a 30 day full refund guarantee I went for it. Ordered an extra mem card to have 768MB total sys mem and I'll see what's what. I know this machine eats up the battery but I have something in mind to go around that - a DC to AC converter to run it off the power adapter. This laptop is going to be for use in/from my car so a DC/AC converter will work extremely well.
it's a Dell Inspiron 9100 P4 3ghz ATI 9700 Graphics beast (should do Half-Life 2 @ 1280x800 res 60fps or so)
Not sure yet if it's 64MB or 128MB bus - if 64MB and the machine is deemed a keeper I saw some 9700 128MB Dell 9100 cards on ebay for under $25
This machine is huge ... I like it (see pic) and weighs approx 10lbs. I can re-paste the CPU & GPU coolers with arctic silver 5
it has three huge squirrel type blower fans so I bet this will be a nice quiet machine while gaming
And, believe it or not, it has a subwoofer that actually works well, according to the reviews. And with three cooling fans, this machine needs a subwoofer for sure. The woofer fits into (of all places) the battery case (it slides into the battery case, not the battery compartment but the battery itself - very unique/clever design). This machine seems to be a sorta-laptop-but-really-a-portable desktop replacement computer that would be perfect for LAN parties if the graphics card could be updated to a GTX260
the 3DMark2003 rating: 3358 and for the Lenovo G555 (and at a lower res too) : 3662
Definately not as convenient as the Lenovo to tote around, it's an ugly laptop really, but half the cost of the Lenovo G555
cost $240 so far. If it doesn't do the job, I'll do an RMA and wait to buy a more up to date model if I can swing it.