Gaming laptop for under $1400.

(I had made this same post under another forum on this site, but after posting it I realized I do not think it qualified as a "hardware" topic so I figured this would be a better place to repost it).

About 3 years ago I bought a Toshiba M45 S265 for about $1300 and have had horrible problems with it since then.

When I first got it home from the store, it would not start. The battery was not dead, and plugging it in did not do anything--it just would not start; something was wrong. I returned it to bestbuy (where I had purchased it), who blamed me, stating it must have been damaged on the ride home, which is total ******** since I was riding on a smooth road, not on dirt. So, they replaced it. After about a year of use, maybe less, still under warranty, the built in Internet card stopped working. I took it to the geek squad (who are basically useless) who said they couldn't help and so they sent it away to Toshiba. It took about a month for them to send it back, which is totally unacceptable and inconvenient to someone who relies on computers for daily life, especially schoolwork. After getting the computer back, not only did the Internet card not work, the screen stopped working! A wire inside the monitor was not connected right or something. So we sent it back again with both those complaints, and about another month after, they sent it back with the screen fixed, but the Internet card did not work. At this point I didn't care anymore. I just bought an external card because I didn't want to wait another month for Toshiba to send me back my computer with more problems than it had before I sent it away. However, thinking that would be the last time I would have to send it away was foolish.

Recently, after about owning this computer for about 3 years, I've been noticing worse problems. The laptop gets EXTREMELY hot even after a short time of use, up to 30 minutes. Sometimes it just randomly turns off without warning. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. After have had just spending money on a gig of ram to make the computer friendlier for games, the screen basically broke. Now it will no longer open and close. This problem stems from the same error of which I was motivated to send it away 2 years ago.

I called bestbuy hoping maybe they would replace it under the lemon law, but they said the first time (when I came home to find the computer would not start) did not count because it was a separate computer.

Anyway, besides my ranting about Toshiba, here's the point of my post.

I'm assuming that Toshiba is going to make the same stupid mistakes they did before. I sent the computer away to be repaired the other day and I'm hoping they'll send it back still unusable if not worse. If that's the case, I'll be able to have it replaced under lemon law, and I don't want to make the same mistakes I did with the Toshiba with my next choice.

The Toshiba cost about 1300, and I'm willing to spend an extra 100 to 200 dollars, so it would have to be something under 1400 dollars.

Here's what I'm looking for:

- A sturdy, durable, yet light weight and portable laptop. I don't want one like the Toshiba that falls apart from doing something as simple opening and closing the screen on a daily basis.

- A computer with enough memory and a good enough graphics card to very effectively play games such as World of Warcraft. My Toshiba had, after I bought more RAM, about 1.5 GB of RAM, and WoW still ran a bit laggy and choppy sometimes. So I'm guessing to get a better-suited computer for that purpose, it'd have to have up to 2 GB of RAM and a much better Graphics card.

- Good customer service. A company that if I send my computer to them, fixes it in a short amount of time, rather than taking a month to make my computer worse than it was before I sent it away.

- Longer battery life (my Toshiba had ridiculously short battery life).

- And a computer with a good fan on it... one that will not get extremely hot after a half hours worth of use.

I don't know much about computers, so I need some help. Anyway, I don't want anything extremely advanced, just something that will allow me to play games like WoW effectively, since that has become the primary use of laptops for me.


The biggest problem is that if they decide to replace my computer, I will only be able to select from the brands at bestbuy. Seems like they sell, more or less, Acer, Dell, HP, and Sony. I've heard really good things about alienware but they don't sell those.

I have a feeling Toshiba is going to send me back my computer worse off than it was, and tell me it was my fault; if that's the case, I'll be forced to buy a new computer.