In the market

So, the motherboard on my laptop is dying, which means I’m going to be getting a new machine here soon. Any recommendations? I don’t like Dell, M-Tech and ProStar are out, and Dell just bought Alienware… so I’m thinking of going Widow. I’m tempted to go for the monster with the 19-inch screen, but my current beast is enough of a bear to carry around, so I’ll probably stick with a 17-incher.

Any advice? It will be a dual-boot system, since Windows is sadly required for the primary application which is NOT games.