Since I'm currently also seeking for a notebook to replace my (5 years) old one, I have done quite a lot of research lately to compare the price-performance ratios of the latest notebooks.
You didn't mention the most important thing, namely how much are you willing to spent for your new notebook?
Minthos wrote:Compal JFL 92+
This one has a 8600M GT which seems to be the fastest mobile gfx card available at a reasonable price......
The 9500M GS surpases the 8600M GT by about 10% regarding performance and it's price is usually the same.
Though, they both still use GDRR2 (in most cases) which is by far slower than the new GDDR3. Only very little manufacturers offer 8600M GTs with GDDR3 (Asus, Dell, ...) but usually just with 256 MB of VRAM.
It also depends on what notebook size you would prefer ... 15.x'', 16'', 17'', or even bigger.
I personally favour 15.x'', because the screen is not too small, but still practical for mobile use.
If you are aiming for a 15.x'' notebook, just like me, then the DELL XPS M1530 is currently the fastest notebook offered at a reasonable price, which also has enough power for playing current games. Although the ~big~ downside of the M1530 is, that it's only offered with 256 MB of VRAM currently.
Although these 256 MB consist of the faster GDDR3 VRAM (which makes the M1530 the fastest notebook in it's category), 256 MB are most often not enough to play current (graphics demanding) games at reasonable settings.
Because of that drawback of the M1530, I decided to wait until the new NVidia Geforce 9600M GT series will be built into notebooks. These offer GDDR3 and up to 1024 MB VRAM (IIRC) and will fill the gap between the already quite "old" mid-range 8600Ms and the high-end 8800Ms.
According to latest NVidia press releases the 9600M series should be built into notebooks from July on, so I will wait this little time to get a notebook with a more recent GPU than the 8600M.
If you just want to play games that are not too graphics demanding (meaning
NO games like crysis, Call of Duty 4, Oblivion, ...) then my recommendation would be the Dell XPS M1530.
First of all Dell is your best bet when it comes to support after your purchase and also you can configure your M1530 to your liking (CPU, Memory, HDD, ...)
If you don't want a 15.x'' notebook, forget all what I said and give me another try
[edit]: nearly forgot the most important thing ... the M1530 is about $1,399 / 899,00 € in the lowest CPU/RAM configuration in combination with the 8600M GT GDDR3, although I would recommend upgrading the CPU/RAM
cheers
