recommend me a laptop for my lad's xmas box (needs to do online gaming)

[Short Norman]

my son (14 year old) is after a PC for Christmas to play online games. At the moment he's playing star-craft and is using his sisters laptop which cause's loads of arguments as you can imagine.

He wants a desktop but with him having a really small bedroom plus me not wanting a desktop set up down stairs, I'd prefer to get him a laptop.

I've got limited knowledge of PC/Laptop spec's and don't want to be sold a piece of s**t by Curry's/PC world etc...

So basically can you tell me what minimum requirements should i be looking for to play online and to future proof his laptop for at least 3 or 4 years.

What do i need in terms of processor/RAM/Graphics card, or even better recommend me a specific laptop - budget of around £350 to £550. I'm going put up to £450 in with him adding anything above that.....

Thanks James....

 

[1812lsd]

http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/laptops-netbooks/gaming-laptops

 

[James172Cup]

*looks at budget

*looks at link

*shakes head.

 

[Wilkeh]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-051-MS&groupid=959&catid=1828&subcat=

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-028-SO&groupid=959&catid=1828&subcat=

 

[Wilkeh]

Top one will be quite a decent gaming rig to be honest.

 

[ekaJ]

http://www.ebuyer.com/275875-lenovo-thinkpad-e525-laptop-nz62juk

Will easily play Starcraft, runs quite demanding games well too!

 

[1812lsd]

*looks at budget

*looks at link

*shakes head.

budget of around £350 to £550. I'm going put up to £450 in with him adding anything above that.....

That reads to me as he is going to put extra on top of the initial £350-550

 

[Short Norman]

thanks for the suggestions (keep them coming), Jake - I was looking at that one the other day...was just out off as I read that the AMD Radeon HD6520G graphics card is 1GB (correct me if I'm wrong), and there were other similarly priced laptop with 2GB+ graphic cards. As said before I've limited knowledge so cannot say if the rest of the other laptops were a bag of crap...

The things I look at are processor/RAM/Graphics card/Hard Drive space and battery life.....

please don't turn this into another thread that just decends into bickering - thanks for your help.

oh and the most I can see my boy adding in is £150 at the most (made up from selling his old Lego starwars and other xmas boxes)