My years old Compaq handles WoW okay, back when I played for a week or two. However, I went the cheap laptop (Sam's Club display model of a Compaq Presario for $600) and a gaming rig that I put together myself. For real gaming you definitely want a desktop. The compromise between laptop benefits (size, battery life, portability, weight, etc) and gaming rig requirements (power draining, big monitor, comfortable peripherals, etc) is a fairly worthless machine. Better to have 2 machines that do different things very well then on that does both badly.
Just my
