Replying to Laptop computers

so im looking to get a laptop for christmas this year, one that i can play games on along with do all my school work on. i know apple makes great laptops, but i dont know if i want to deal with the whole dowloading a program to play pc games and such, along with the fact i dont know much if anything about macs. i was just wondering what soe other good brands of laptops are. ive been looking at both sony vaios and hewlett packard notebooks. does anyone have any experience with either of these brands. i customized what i consider to be a decent laptop that will last me a few years for about $1200 on HP, and the sony theres one im looking at around $1300 but doesnt have as much features or hardware as the hp. any suggestions fellow nsers?