text: What kind of designer are you? Photo, video, cad?\n\nIf you're doing photoshop or video editing, you don't need much of a graphics card, just memory. Well, maybe not. You'll still need the graphics card for the gaming though.\n\nIf you're a cad designer, you will need to get a good workstation graphics card (nVidia QuadroFX Go 1400 is the best for laptops). Unfortunately, it's not half as good as the desktop QuadroFX 4500 or most of the newer gaming graphics card. If you're really going for the high end, you could get a laptop with an ATI Radeon X800 or X1800 and softmod it, but it's pretty risky. The X1800 might not even be softmod-able. However, even without the softmod, it'll still be pretty fast for OpenGL, not to mention much cheaper than the QuadroFX Go 1400.\n\nFor designing, you'll want a LOT of memory. 2 GIGs is usually fine for anything besides extensive video editing.\n\nYou'll also want a dual-core CPU. AMD Turion X2 is fine, as with the newer centrinos. They aren't the fastest, but they'll keep your laptop cool enough to let the maximum power out of your graphics card and memory.\n\nMid-range solution: The best would be the Dell E1705. Configure it with the 2nd fastest dual-core CPU, 2GIG ram, the GeForce Go 7900 GS. You can check Dealnews.com periodically for Dell deals. They usually post a $750 coupon weekly. The complete system will cost you about $1500-1800. This laptop will run almost as fast as the high-end solutions below. It's by far the best bang for the buck.\n\nHigh-end solutions: An Alienware, Dell XPS M1710, or Sager laptop with an nVidia Go 7900 GTX (http://www.powernotebooks.com/category.php?catId=26#id1415). I would avoid the Alienware and Dell XPS setups because they will be at least $1000 more expensive than the Sager model. However, they're usually better built and have better cooling. If you really want to shell out 50% more money for a 20% gain in quality/speed, go for them. But there's no guarentee that you're going to get anything close to what you're paying for.