The short answer: No. Do your homework.
Long answer: To paraphrase another user's post -
1. It's a laptop
2. It can play current PC games at/near max settings
3. It's under $1k USD
Pick 2. The's the gist of it. While laptops have been getting closer in terms of value-per-dollar to desktops, we're still talking about almost a straight 2-to-1 ratio in favor of desktops here. Don't get me wrong here, I
love having my notebook as my main rig for its portability and ease of use (and the speakers and display are
awesome on this thing, but that's strictly YMMV) but generally speaking, you're going to get better for cheaper on a desktop; so if your main concern is performance on a budget, I'd go desktop all the way, and maybe couple it with a Brazos netbook that you can game on (on minimum settings).
Having said that, let's get to the chase here, shall we?
1. The current big-dog is Intel's Sandy Bridge (SB) CPU for both mobile and desktop in terms of speed, no question. Downside is that SB laptops have a - while much improved - weak integrated graphics processor (IGP) making a discrete graphics processor unit (dGPU) necessary. It is also pricier than the AMD mobile CPUs.
2. The biggest new release is AMD's Llano/Sabine unit. It's a much more balanced card than the SB (lesser CPU speed but better IGP) making gaming on low/mid settings possible, and it plays well with other (AMD-branded, I'm sure) dGPUs. Lastly the price-point is a more affordable than Intel units. These units are rolling out now, should be readily available within a month or so.
3. The next big thing would be AMD's Bulldozer. From what I understand, (in general terms) it takes the strengths of Sabine and (to use a cliche . . .) puts it on steroids. It's slated for release in Q4 of 2011.
4. The next big thing after that would be Ivy Bridge from Intel: smaller die size, more efficiency, more power. It's slated for release in H1 of 2012. If Intel's CPU performance and pricing is any indication, it should blow the AMD units out of both in CPU performance (good) and pricing (bad). To compete with AMD my speculation is that Intel's going to have to work hard to improve their IGP but we'll see what happens.
Admittedly, the elephant sitting in the room that I didn't mention is Nvidia (one of the main dGPU makers - pretty important if your main concern is gaming): I'm not too familiar with their side of the tech tree, but as I understand it, there's going to be a pretty hefty upgrade in Q4 of 2011 on the desktop side of things; usually they tend to release the mobile counterparts a few months after the desktop part.
Another trend amongst laptop makers is the use of horrible, horrible displays on laptops. It looks like the higher-definition displays are becoming more and more available compared to 2009 (1366x768 on a 15.6" is
not acceptable) but it is definitely not as readily available before HDTVs were introduced to the market (and standardized the display resolutions for some reason). That is definitely something you might want to consider - but then again, that might not be as big a priority if you're getting it just to game and surf the web; as I've mentioned, you're going to have to make compromises on buying a laptop vs. a desktop within a certain budget: to make newer games work on a lot of current laptops out there, you're going to
have to lower the resolution, simple as that.
Better yet, do you have a certain timeframe for you to obtain a laptop? Generally speaking, you can get great deals around the holidays/Black Friday, or failing that, you can get some great deals come the back-to-school season.
(Oh, and there's a lot more well-informed members floating around to give you advice; I may be incorrect in some of my statements/releases. But still,
do your homework if you're curious)
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