Laptop recommendations?

[Nth Power]

I was thinking of getting a laptop to replace my desktop, but I know next to nothing about what's out there.  My PC is starting to crap out on me and it's pretty old.

The criteria:
- Under $1000
- It's going to be used mainly for internet and e-mail.  Gaming will be secondary, but I won't be playing anything new on it.   I'd like it to be fast enough to play something like Civ IV smoothly.  That's about as graphic intensive as it would get.
- Reliability and battery life would be nice.

Do they sell anything decent at Best Buy, maybe the HP laptops?  Any other brands to look at or avoid?

[Turtle]

Do you have a costco membership?

[Daehawk]

Looked at Dell?

[Nth Power]

Do you have a costco membership?

No.  Costco is probably not in the picture unless it would be worth it to get a membership just for a laptop.

Looked at Dell?

I looked a little bit.  It looks like most of them come with "Intel® Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100" for video.  Is that any good?

Also, does it make any difference between Intel or AMD?

[Turtle]

No, the 3100 is pretty worthless for gaming.  Now, it'll run very basic 3D games well enough, but anything slightly more advanced and you run into problems.

Nor does it matter between AMD and Intel, both CPUs have comparable performance although I think the intel has slightly better performance, but I think AMD considerably lowered their prices to compensate.

[Daehawk]

Looks like ibuypower has some nice ones with good vid cards in them.

http://www.ibuypower.com/mall/notebook.asp

[Nth Power]

Looks like ibuypower has some nice ones with good vid cards in them.

http://www.ibuypower.com/mall/notebook.asp

So ibuypower is a reputable dealer?  Some of those look pretty decent.  Thanks for the link. 

[ROTC1983]

Looks like ibuypower has some nice ones with good vid cards in them.

http://www.ibuypower.com/mall/notebook.asp

So ibuypower is a reputable dealer?  Some of those look pretty decent.  Thanks for the link. 

http://www.resellerratings.com/store/iBUYPOWER

Check out the ratings...don't take everything said on there for the truth though.  The people with issues are always the more vocal majority. 

[papasmurff]

outlet.dell.com

That is where I got my laptop from....It is mainly referb or off lease computers...so brand new

[Nth Power]

The Dell outlet looks pretty good too.  The downside I see with ibuypower looks like the long ship times. Hmmm....

Thanks for the help everyone.  I'm going to look around a little more and think on it - hopefully I'll have a new one before the holidays.

[javahead]

If you are used to an upper-middle class PC, a laptop will never replace it for that budget. If you are a heavy-duty gamer that requires a lot of FPS and reaction time, you simply cannot get that out of a laptop for less than many-thousand $$.

If you play MMORPGs and stuff you might be able to squeak by, but you'll regret the lack of upgradability later on.

Keep the case clean and get some upgrades for your existing box.

[Nth Power]

I don't do much PC gaming anymore, so portability gets favored over gaming ability.  Unless I found some amazing deal for a desktop, I would rather go with a laptop at this point.