it really depends - some gaming machines are big, heavy, generate a lot of heat (a laptop's #1 enemy) and have very limited battery life, while others are very much like your mainstream desktop replacement laptop - still very fast/powerful but not as heavy and with battery life of 4+ hrs ... and they still have powerful graphic cards suitable for heavy gaming.
I recommended you to look around those forums because you will find out that there are many other options beyond the HPs, Dells and Sonys in the big electronics stores ... and in the end, when you come up with a decision, it will be a more "informed" one.
Lately I haven't been as regular on those forums as I was before, so I am not sure what the latest popular notebooks over there are but from what I remember the quality notebooks usually come from Asus, Sager/Clevo, Acer, MSI, Mitac, Compal (some of them not exactly well know, right
) and they are indeed viable alternatives, and maybe even better, than notebooks from Sony, Tishiba, Dell, HP, etc.
Actrually, if you think that when you are buying a Sony, you are indeed buying a Sony, here is an interesting read (the part at the bottom) and it's true, this is how the computer business functions:
http://www.discountlaptops.com/index...type=ourbrands