I am considering buying a new laptop next spring. The one I have is four years old. I can actually still run the majority of games released now, but the system is obviously outdated. I have the Gateway Gears of War edition with a 2.27ghz DualCore Intel Core2 Duo processor, 4gb RAM, and contains a NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS graphics card with 512mb of memory.

Now, I spent $1300 for this four years ago and $1700 after the black tie warranty. I've actually been pretty satisfied with it overall and it ran the original Witcher really well on fairly high settings. My thought now is whether or not I should go all out and shell out $3,000-$4,000 for an ultimate machine or just do what I did the first two times and limit myself to around $1500.

I was looking at the Digital Storm x17E. The biggest complaint a reviewer site had was that it's a boring looking device. Eh, that's not that big of a deal to me. I don't need to spend an extra $500 bucks just to get a neat design like an Alienware. Do most of you think it's worth shelling out the money for something ultimate now? Maybe I could then get five or six years out of my system rather than the realistic 2.5 that I got with this one (before games really started being too much for it)? I also have some individual questions:

1) The Digital Storm website often puts a 180gb SSD hard drive as a default with a larger 7200RPM hard drive as a secondary. I am so out of the loop that the last I knew, the 7200RPM hard drives were the better drives. What does SSD do and is it worth shelling out the extra money for one? Though I probably wouldn't have two hard drives. Rather, I'd probably just go with a larger SSD drive if I decided it was a superior option.

2) They have a wireless card by default, but there is an option for a Bigfoot Networks Killer wireless card that is $20 more. 90% of the time, my laptop is wired, but when I go home for a holiday or something, I do run it wirelessly. Is there really any benefit to that?

3) Perhaps the most important question is the graphics card. I see that they are now sometimes using dual graphics cards in new laptops. When selecting their best model, the default is a 2x SLI (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M 4GB with NVIDIA Optimus Technology). However, for $533 less, you can get a 2x CrossFire (AMD Radeon HD 7970M 2GB) or for $748 less, you can get a 2x SLI (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670MX 3GB with NVIDIA Optimus Technology). Surprisingly the website actually lists the cheaper GeForce GTX as being a better performer than the Radeon cards. Perhaps this is due to the extra gb each one offers. My guess would be that the GeForce is cheaper simply because it's an older model. Anyways, is it really worth spending the extra $750 on the 4gb cards?

4) The Warranty. They were listed as having one of the best warranties by that laptop review website. Yet, it doesn't appear they have option accident protection. Is anyone familiar with Digital Storm as I'd be hesitant buying a $4000 laptop without accident protection. This is what their warrant says: Life-time Expert Customer Care with 3 Year Limited Warranty

Anyways, those are the questions I have. The one I priced out costs $4210. I don't know if I could get myself to shell out that much, but if the long term value is actually worth it over buying a cheaper $1500 or $2000 one (say I can get double the years out of it), then it may be worth it. The one I priced out also has 32gb of 1600mhz DDR RAM. Sounds like overkill, but probably would increase the life of the laptop by quite a bit.

Also, if anyone has any suggestions as to what laptop maker has the most valuable gaming laptops, I would be open to them as well. And no, I will not buy a desktop even though I can get more for less. Desktops just don't do it for me when I do travel a fair amount.

Thanks for your time.

I would for once love to see a real economic system in a game. For example, if you have 100 arrows and sell 80 of them, then the price decreases as the store's inventory fills up. On the other hand, if the store only has 10 said arrows available, then the prices are higher than you'd think they should be. It would also be nice if NPCs contributed to this economic system by either shopping themselves or operating supply routes.

Imagine if a stores inventory was partially based on some supply routes that were continually being raided by, for example, drowners. What if there was a quest to remove the drowners and thus in the long term would cause the prices at the store to gradually decrease when purchasing items? On the contrary, if you let the drowners live, then the prices for items you sell would increase because the supply would be limited. Perhaps there could even be a potion that hatches new drowners along the supply route to help boost prices when you feel your inventory is starting to get full and you need to offload some stuff. Perhaps you could even build relationships with the storeowners that would give you some clout in their business decisions such as which products to order in (thus helping lower the price for you or make an item available that otherwise wouldn't be). Maybe even make it possible to become a partner and thus receive a portion of the stores profits from future sales. Or imagine if you had a massive city 10x the size of anything seen in an RPG before. Imagine if this city had numerous stores of similar type. Think competition. What if you could raid/burn down/burglarize these other stores in order for more business to come to the store you are a partial owner in? What if getting caught in one of these actions hurt the reputation of your partnered business and caused not only customers to stop shopping, but suppliers to stop providing. Maybe you could make black market deals to import illegal "supergoods" that you could attempt to sell to the citizens, but always risk that the person could be a snitch and your business would be suspended while it's reputation would drop.

I know this would take a lot of development time and probably would be hard on resources based on all the calculations required. But a dynamic economic system, if done properly, could essentially make a complete side game in itself.

I am sure I am going to get laughed off these forums for this question. But I am curious if anyone thinks the Wii U will get the Witcher 3. Their announcement said all high end systems, but I am guessing that applies only to PC, Nextbox, and PS4 (since some don't consider the Wii U "high end."). My guess is that they will claim that the Wii U doesn't have the base and perhaps not even the horsepower to do what the Witcher 3 requires. The problem is, my laptop (which ran the original Witcher great) is four years old now. I may get a new one thing spring, but as a college student, I may pass on that for another year or two. I would be willing to get the Witcher on the Nextbox, which I will probably purchase shortly after release, but I am very hesitant to do so. I found that The Witcher 2's inventory system was horrible on the XBox360 and would be tough to fix otherwise. With the Wii U, however, the touchpad would work amazingly for managing the inventory.