good laptop for the money?

alright guys.Ive been looking at laptops for the past month, becuase im gonna get one soon. And i came across a

Toshiba

intel centrino/ core 2 duo processor

vista

3gb ram

200gb hard drive

and its a 17.1" widescreen

for $649. Which from what ive been looking at seems pretty reasonable and that its at a good price for what you're getting.But ive never owned a laptop before, so i figured, what do you guys think?can i get it for less or what?or is there a better deal?

You pretty much can't game at all on a laptop until you get near the $1000-$1500 price range. Toshiba and Asus both offer some nice lower end gaming laptops with 8600 or 9500 GPUs. But they're way above the cost of your initial machine.

ex: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220334

For 700-1000 you might find a laptop with an 8400 or similar in it, but it's not going to perform adequately for gaming to make it worth buying. It will be a killer machine to do your senior thesis on but anything with more 3d action than Civ4 is going to choke.

ex: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220257