Ars has a good article up about buying laptops,
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/08/the-ars-pc-laptop-buying-guide-back-to-school-edition/
Won't be much for Computer Nerds, but most of their suggestions seem good, if not what I would suggest specifically, so you can point non Computer Nerd friends & family at this link to help them get started.
They didn't mention the Gaming Laptop I would be buy now if I could, we have to get gf a Macbook Air 11" before I get a gaming laptop T_T
Gaming Laptop I would get if buying one right now is ~$1,350.00 at Amazon (
full disclosure: I am Amazon Associate, so if you buy from this link I will make a couple dollars, doesn't affect price)
ASUS G75VW-AS71 
Specs for
ASUS G75VW-AS71:
- Intel Core_i7_2.7_GHz Processor 2.3GHz
- 16 GB DIMM RAM
- 750GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
- 17.3-Inch Screen, Nvidia GTX 660M 2G GDDR5
I have a buddy that is a computer nerd that has one of the older ASUS gaming machines, he has been happy with it, only complaint I remember him mentioning is that keyboard could get hot while gaming, but the current ASUS gaming machines have a much improved cooling setup from the reviews I have read, believe it even has removable cleanable Air filters, so you don't need to take it apart as often to clean out airflow path.
I have been using 13" ASUS UL30V for two years, runs SC2 on med settings fine, and I have worked it hard blogging, was running a 23" & a 15" external monitors at home for about 6 months till I got my iMac for blogging.
So I personally have confidence in ASUS laptops, ASUS was one of the brands one of my Computer Nerd buddies suggested when I told him I was looking for laptops, I have been very happy with it.
If you have any laptop suggestions or comments please post, I have found Notebook Check best place to start
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Top-10-Desktop-Replacement-Laptops.17035.0.html they also benchmark most laptop graphics cards.
