College Student First Laptop

Well I've been looking at laptops to buy now for a while and I've come down to newegg for the best deals. I am going to be going into Computer Science as a Major, but their requirements for a PC are minimum and don't make much sense, 512 RAM/ Dual Core/ and Vista

Anyways my budget is low, but I want to be able to play some games on it. The reason I want a laptop is for portability, I'll be able to plug it in in most places so battery life with a graphics card isn't much of a problem for me. The computers I was looking at were

ASUS F8 Series F8Sp-X1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6834220303

ASUS M51 Series M51Sn-C1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6834220342

ASUS F3 Series F3KA-X4
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6834220305


I was also looking at this one b/c the CPU looks a lot better at 2.4G, but it's 200 dollars more
ASUS M51 Series M51Sn-X2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6834220308

My questions are kinda general, and I hope you guys can offer some help. I'm more of a software guy, so when looking at these different cards, I'm not 100% sure. I want to get a good buy that will last me some time. The games that I will be playing will be basic and won't be on the best settings I just want the computer to last me for some time.

So hopefully with the easiest first. Some of them come with different types of wireless cards for different networks.. Is n all that popular? Will the g/b do for me b/c that's what I'm thinking my school has.

And for graphics cards I want a minimum of 512 and all of those computers have them but one has the ATI Mobility Radan HD 3650 which is a GB... I've read forums before discussing this card verses the NVIDEA GeForce Go 7600 GT... With only 2.0G for the processor on most of them, which card would be better.

There's two for $999 the top two... Is there any major difference that makes one better then the other? Which one is better for the same price.

There is also the one for $1,199 with a faster processor, will the 2.4G help me out all that much with games, for $200 more. ATM on this PC i'm playing Age of Empires 3, Unreal Tournament 2004, America's Army, and an old Red Alert 2. But I would like to play some more first person shooters like COD4, and Battlefield, whatever...

I've listed all ASUS, is there a flaw with them, they look good but which would u suggest?

Agreed, HD 3650 beats Geforce GO 7600 but as "cjl" said the GATEWAY P6860 FX destroys all of these laptops in terms of gaming, i say go for the GATEWAY and upgrade the CPU to T8300/T9300