Laptop for college

[Schfive]

Hi everyone. I'm about to be a freshman in college and school is just weeks away - and I don't have a laptop. I'll be doing aerospace engineering so the laptop I'll need will have to have some substantial processing and graphics power for CAD work. But I'll also be doing some gaming as well. I'm pretty much set on a Vista based 15.4" laptop in the range of $1300-1700, obviously the lower, the better. I'd like this to be useable for at least the next 2.5 years and still be able to run the latest CAD programs. And I'd also like this to be thin and light enough that it wouldn't be a burden carrying everywhere. What suggestions would you have for a computer like this. The three laptops I've been looking at are the Dell XPS M1530 and the Force 3551 and the Asus G50V-A1.

[The Bill]

I would steer clear of the Dell XPS, I'm not a fan of paying a thousand dollars extra. But I was going to recommend the Asus G50V-A1 for you, and I see you've already looked at it. It's nice, portable, and should fit everything you've said up there. So not much to say here, the Asus G50V-A1 is also a pretty nice looking notebook (http://www.gentechpc.com/Asus/Asus_G70/G70S/19.jpg), though remember to include shipping costs into your total cost.

Bill