That's a little out, my gaming rig is 3 years old, cost under a grand and plays anything and everything on the market right now, sure not at 1920 x 1080 but at good resolutions with good frame rates.

This. Definitely. If your TV isn't THAT old (I guess, something from this millenium), you could easily connect your gaming rig to it - you even don't need to spend money on monitor!
Just keyboard, mouse (cheap), gamepad - and here you go, semi-next-gen "console", which (by the way) could do much more stuff, than normal consoles do.

Think about it this way:
You're making long-term deal with Gaming God, and he allows you to play with small budget in better resolution and quality. As for me, that DOES make sense!
Also, if you need something JUST for surf & type & watch videos, my suggestion is to look at so-called "smartbooks" - ARM-powered with extreeemly long battery life.


Wrong. Consoles got, well, 4, 5 years old graphic cards? As soon as new GPU gen came out, previous one lost its cost extremely fast - but they're still fast enough to run 1080p at max! And that's amazing about PC game world. For example, my HD3870 cost me about 250$. HD4xxx came out and puf - HD3870 lost 100$. Also, your CPU could last about 5 years without became unactual - that's because there isn't that much CPU work in modern games. Streaming data, AI, occlusion culling - that's pretty much the end. Even physics is moving to GPU!
And still, you've got something called "Crossfire/SLI" Buy two cheap, old GPUs and blend them together. ATi's Crossfire will give you up to 70% FPS punch for an extra card, SLI gives less. And having two "sometime high-end" GPUs will make you happy.

Conclusion:

• Best option is not to buy laptop
  
• Build desktop instead, buy cheap netbook/smartbook, connect PC to your TV, get gamepad - enjoy.
  
• Top-end videocards are for highest resolutions and mostly are overkill (I'm pretty sure they will be an overkill for Skyrim unless you've got 98645x74142 resolution)
  
• Previous-gen videocards are cheap enough to buy and fast enough to run.

I would go for the xps, why? ive got one lol But the xps 17 with the 3gb gt 555 and it is a very good high quality machine. As the requirements aren't out no one knows what pc will play it the best. But if you went with the xps 15 i would guess it would play it fine on medium settings. Ive thrown a few games at my 17 and it blasts through them no problem. The specs are in my sig, decent sandy bridge cpu, ram upgradeble to 16gb, gt 555m is a decent gpu which if overclocked can match the gtx 460, 2 hard drive bays, JBL high quality speakers and a backlit keyboard. Plus the gt 555m has optimus tech allowing about 5 hours battery life on a single charge (not gaming obviously) You can get some decent deals on them. Most of the people here are desktop fan boys tbh, yes they may be cheaper but if the op wants a laptop then he doesnt want a desktop.

The game will be released for pre-cataclysmic consoles as well , your 4 years old laptop will run it at maximum settings

wait until a month before or so? then you are sure you will get a good laptop

While I appreciate that it would be better to build a desktop for 1000 and buy a netbook, thats not what I want.
A Desktop is not feasible for my current living situation so even the bulkiest of laptops is better for now.
Maybe later on down the road I can buy a desktop and have two amazing computers, but for now, its going to be a notebook.

So back on topic, any other opinions on the ability of the XPS and NP8150, as well as other notebooks, to run skyrim based off of some game thats been released recently as a benchmark?