In general, using laptops for video editing (or gaming) is not a good idea. Better get a desktop. If you really must get a laptop, read on.
Despite the popular belief, a Macbook is totally the wrong laptop to buy for video editing. Macbooks are all about gloss and show and for casual use they are great if you have money to blow up. But when it comes to performance, they are miles behind similar priced laptops. They also overheat under full load as cooling is sacrificed for looks. For the price of a dual core Macbook Pro you can get a quad-core HP or Dell - you can take a guess which is way faster. Another thing in India is that people have a keeda for Final Cut Pro when clearly it is the inferior software compared to Premiere Pro CS5.5 or Vegas Pro 10 or Avid MC5. In Premiere Pro CS5.5 you can edit 4K RED footage real-time, whereas in FCP 7 you can't even work with 1080p DSLR footage! Even that has to be transcoded. Even for a software like Premiere Pro CS5.5 which is available on both Mac OS X and Windows 7 - it is 5%-10% faster on Windows on a similar specced machine. So, if you want to do professional work in India - better get a Macbook Pro. If you want to maximize your productivity, get a Windows laptop. And since you are interested in gaming, don't even think about a Mac, most of your favourite games are DirectX based which isn't avaliable on Mac OS X. Things that are recommended for editing:
Big, high resolution screen (1080p) - with an external monitor.
Good cooling
Lots of RAM - at least 8GB.
64-bit OS
The more cores, the better, so make sure you get a Core i7 QM.
7200 RPM hard drive - if the laptop has two hard drive then that is ideal.
NVIDIA graphics if you use Premiere Pro CS5.5 as it uses CUDA.
I suggest the new Alienware M17x. Yes, it is expensive at Rs. 1.6 lakhs, but it covers all the bases as far as video editing is concerned, with a superb screen. Dell XPS15 and MSI GE620, though the Alienware has a far superior graphics card than both. The new Dell XPS15 with a i7 2720QM, GT 540, 8GB RAM and 1080P B+RG screen is excellent value for Rs. 70k. For comparison, the entry level Macbook Pro 15-inch with inferior config (4GB RAM, 5400RPM HDD, HD6490, 1440x900 screen, etc.) costs Rs. 1.05 lakhs - now you know what I mean by bad value. If you have a greater budget, maybe you can import one of those amazing Origin or Eurocom or Maingear laptops. Don't think they are available in India.
Hope this helps!
