What is a good gaming laptop?

Yeah I agree, Alienware is incredibly overpriced and overrated.

Some of the GT70s use AMD APUs which would not be good for developing. If you end up purchasing one you should make absolute certain it has the CPU you want. But check out that Sager I linked to, MSI essentially rebrands their laptops and resells them.

I think you're thinking of ASUS. I've not seen any MSI Notebook that looks like a Sager.

I have spent the last 3 weeks researching this issue every day something like 16 hours a day.
In that time I've bought two laptops, an Acer and a Lenovo, and both had bad wireless cards that would just disconnect constantly, and the Acer also had a bad webcam, grainy from like 10 years ago webcams, not 720p HD like it was supposed to be.

Both were good laptops otherwise, but I didn't like the port positioning on them, but could have lived with that for the price. Sadly, quality is just bad these days. I had hopes for the Acer because I have a Wallyworld special from 6 years ago that's been nothing but reliable (after taking Vista off it and putting XP). So, I was disappointed.

Anyway, you can't go wrong with the Sager NP8295 and the MSI GT70 2OC-065US.
These are the very best for features and price. Now, there are "cheaper" models under these that would be good also like the Sager NP7370, which might be more in your budget and then you can add a couple of options before you get to your price limit. Also, if you're like me and like the Glossy screens, not Matte screens, for that model GenTechPC is the only one I've found that changes the screen for that particular model. Not sure why the others don't. And I believe MSI has some good lower end ones also. It ticks me off that all the gaming computers have went Matte and make you pay out of your butt to change the screen if they even allow you to.

The best places to shop are XoticPC, GenTechPC, LPCDigital & Prostar I believe.

So, I would go with the MSI and Sager.... Me, I'm leaning Sager because it's fully upgradable, and all the laptop stores rebrand it, etc., so it's popular and good. The MSI's you can't upgrade the video card. Oh, and don't ever get a 14 inch screen on a normal sized laptop. yuck!

I'll be buying mine from XoticPC.

Also, I did find one other good deal, though it's a $50 more or so now, but still a good deal. The Toshiba Satellite P70-ABT2G22 from ToshibaDirect. I'm actually considering this put the Hybrid Drive selection and the Blue-ray Burner, but the problem is that the X70's which is the exact same laptop, but with the GTX 770 video cards, a bunch of people have reported overheating crashes. But, this model has a GTX 740 which is still a good gaming card, but not as powerful, but close still, so I'm concerned the same issue might still exist with it.

So I have to decide between these three options..... Do I save a little money and risk again, do I get the computer I want, but save money and upgrade over the next several months, or do I go all out with the computer I want?

If Acer and Lenovo would have fixed their issues, those would be good options also, but alas there is no quality control anymore. For example, even though Lenovo knows their wireless cards are bad, they still are selling the same card with their Y410p and Y510p.

MSI laptop is pretty good for gaming, you might also want to consider lenovo