Min & Rec specs for gaming laptop?

I have a customer who inquired with me about a gaming laptop. I have not been a gamer for 3 to 4 years and do not know much about what specs a laptop really needs to be able to play the more recent or last years FSP style games.

He is 15yrs old and plays FSP war games primarily such as Rome: Total War.

Can anyone make recommendations for the minimum specs and medium specs recommended?

I assume things such as the following are important on for laptops and gaming:

Video Card
Screen technology (response time/ms)
Screen Resolution
RAM
Processor type & speed

Any suggestions or a foundation to start from is apprecaited.

Woodcycl,
While laptops aren't recommended for gaming, there are some out there that perform pretty good if you know what to buy. I'd recommend at least a GeForce Go 6600, since laptops rarely have upgradable video cards (some do but the upgrades themselves sometimes make the capability not even worth it. Screen resolution is something to watch out for too. Some laptops (esp. the so called "wide screen") have problems running games out of their native 16:9 aspect ration (games generally call for 4:3). Anything around 1280x1024 or up should be fine. RAM, 512 megs is the minimum I'd look for in this day and age, 1 GB is preferable. CPU...tricky question. Most of the Pentium M machines out today are around 1.6-1.8 GHz range, but because of the 2 MB cache amount the system runs faster.

Bottom line: Gaming laptops are usually expensive. Sometimes a company like Dell will have a decent video card on a "Business" machine (usually cheaper than their XPS gaming machines) and is often the best way to go without breaking the bank. Something like this might be alright with the optional upgraded video card: http://www1.us.dell.com/content/prod...=19&l=en&s=dhs

Good luck and I hope this helps!