Basic situation: I want to be able to buy & play The Sims 3. However, my laptop is not that great. I had the Sims 2, but couldn't run it on my computer.
My question is... does anyone know of a fairly inexpensive kind of gaming computer? I honestly don't know where to start. I've been looking in ads and such at computers advertised as "good for gaming", and they're running $1200+. Is this average?
OR, is there something I can do to my laptop to get it to run games better? Would that be a cheaper alternative? I don't know the exact specs of my computer, i.e.: what kind of graphics card it has, etc. How do I find that information out?
Okay, I guess that's a lot of questions, but I am not that knowledgeable about computers. Any response/help is great, thank you.

I have a Dell XPS M1530 and it runs TS3 great. It was a bit pricey when I bought it (about March time) but I got it when they were doing an offer with like £150 off. I think mine should have been around £730 and I got it for £521 (I know it doesn't add up, I also had a voucher for so much percent off).
But yeah, I recommend Dell's XPS systems, or of course Alienware *sigh* But I don't think they are in the affordable range lol!

I left this information in a comment but Ill leave it hear also lol.

My suggestion would be the HP Pavilion dv7-2185DX. Starting at 699. Great afordable Gaming laptop

Oh see that's a lot cheaper than I was looking at! I'll definitely check that out, thanks!

I love to play Aion Online and I used to play World of Warcraft as well. I'm currently running a Gateway M-1625. It's got an AMD Turion 64 X2 processor. I don't know if you have it on your computer, but there should be a "Windows Experience Index" which rates your Processor, Memory, Graphics, Gaming Graphics, Primary Hard Disk etc. and comes up with an overall score based on the lowest sub-score. I just (this moment) assessed the performance and this computer ranks 3.0, but if you average all categories, it's more like 4.5 on average. That takes into account bit rate and graphics performance. So yeah :D It's not "Top of the line" but it ain't the bottom either! Paid $499.

Oh, yeah, I think my computer has that... it's like under the games thing, right? I'll go check it out, thanks.

Go to "computer" then right-click and then select "properties" and you'll see everything you wanted to know.

(p.s. it's a lap top)

There is nothing (economical) you can do to your laptop to improve its gaming performance. Gaming performance is controlled almost exclusively by the graphics card you have, and in a laptop this is never upgradable.

If you want a gaming machine but don't want to spend much money, you should buy a desktop PC. For a start with laptops you pay for the portability, but also you cannot upgrade laptops, so if you want to keep up with the gaming world you'll just have to buy another new one in two years' time.

And as for the Windows Experience Index, don't average the scores. Take only the "gaming graphics" score, because that's the one that matters for gaming.

that's pretty true, but for what it is, I love mine lol. It was pretty funny though, my boyfriend is a gamer to the extreme. I didn't realize until I booted up the game on his computer that my character had green eyes ;) It all depends on what you're willing to deal with. My computer is "good enough" for the price and it does everything I need it to do, but it's by no means a luxury or gaming-specific computer.

That is, in essence, what I want. It doesn't need to be gaming specific, as my previous laptop was not, but it worked all right with the game, and that's basically what I am looking for.
I'm not really a big gamer, per se, but I do love the Sims.

All you really need for a decent gaming machine is a few simple things. 4 Gig of ram is recommended. If you game with less, you will see the difference. RAM is cheap these days too.

Video card... this is highly important. This is what makes and breaks a gaming machine. Use Google to find out more info about different types of cards and what they all can do. You don't have to get a top of the line newest out there card to get great performance. Newegg and tigerdirect are your friends. Look around... you can find great deals on good cards.

CPU - You want at least a dual core. Most modern games take advantage of this to run on one core while Windows runs on the other core. This improves performance.

But yea.... do some research. There is a TON of info out there on Google and other search engines.