Can't talk authoritatively about their laptops, but don't take Acer desktops off your radar -- the Visa may suck, but I picked up an Aspire back in January. Dunno what model it was exactly, but it came with 4 gigs of RAM and an Athlon x4 processor. Slapped in a Geforce 8600 I had "lying around" (by which I mean I bought it on sale a year and a half ago without realizing my old box didn't have PCI-E slots) and it runs like a beaut. On top of that, it was a package deal, so they threw in an LCD widescreen! Awesome.
Dell makes a decent machine as well, but the ones I saw looked like they'd need more customizing to do what I wanted -- aside from my graphics card, I would've been looking at a new sound card to take advantage of my booster speaker. Alienware is more for the psycho-hardcore-ubergamer set; you're paying extra for the ability to run CounterStrike without suffering framerate drop when someone sets off a flashbang. If that sentence made no sense to you then don't get Alienware. ;D
Really, most manufacturers are quite similar. Just make sure you get the specs you want (high processor power, lots of RAM, a fair bit of HD space for raw video) for a decent price, and be sure to compare what you'd pay for a good machine plus the necessary upgrades versus the whole thing as a complete setup. When I bought my 8600 it was on sale and maybe a tier down from what was top of the line at the time; you could probably save a hundred bucks or so if you got a similar deal.
Also, I'm guessing you're double-excited about Portal because it's free at the moment, but don't rush right into a purchase because of that -- even if you miss the offer, it's worth it to spring the $30 for the Orange Box, because then you get to play Team Fortress 2 and all the Half-Life 2 episodes. But that's just me bein' judgmental about video games again.
Dell makes a decent machine as well, but the ones I saw looked like they'd need more customizing to do what I wanted -- aside from my graphics card, I would've been looking at a new sound card to take advantage of my booster speaker. Alienware is more for the psycho-hardcore-ubergamer set; you're paying extra for the ability to run CounterStrike without suffering framerate drop when someone sets off a flashbang. If that sentence made no sense to you then don't get Alienware. ;D
Really, most manufacturers are quite similar. Just make sure you get the specs you want (high processor power, lots of RAM, a fair bit of HD space for raw video) for a decent price, and be sure to compare what you'd pay for a good machine plus the necessary upgrades versus the whole thing as a complete setup. When I bought my 8600 it was on sale and maybe a tier down from what was top of the line at the time; you could probably save a hundred bucks or so if you got a similar deal.
Also, I'm guessing you're double-excited about Portal because it's free at the moment, but don't rush right into a purchase because of that -- even if you miss the offer, it's worth it to spring the $30 for the Orange Box, because then you get to play Team Fortress 2 and all the Half-Life 2 episodes. But that's just me bein' judgmental about video games again.
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