I'm with Van on this one, if it's a basic enough workhorse model with no whistles and bells then Dell is the way forward. When family ask me to recommend a PC/Laptop its almost always Dell, because:
a) they are relatively cheap
b) they are no more prone to failure than any other manufacturer is
c) even parents have seen Dell adverts and recognise the brand so they don't tend to ask a bazillion questions when I pick a random one in their budget range and say "Get that one"
Obviously my own laptop (previously a sweet Vaio with nifty nvidia gfx & upgraded ram...well until the RAID array was borked by one of the HDDs failing and keyboard went tits up after spilling coke on it) and people who will do more than send emails, order Waitrose deliveries and look at pictures of holidays and family get togethers get a more targeted service.
On your budget and for the odd sims 3 session then take a look at Dell, they will likely offer what you need. If not, check out some of the Acer range, quite a few of the sub £500 models come with a named gfx card and not some shitty Intel built in bollocks. They are massively behind desktop cards, as always, but it should be enough grunt to get Sims/WoW etc running okay.
Remember that the HDD stocks are drying up fast thanks to the floods in Thailand. This knock on is expected to last until early-mid 2012 and prices have almost doubled already on some component sites. On top of that some smaller pc/notebook manufacturers will not be getting stock as it will go to larger OEMs, like Dell, whose business is more important to them. This could easily end up inflating the pc/lappy prices by £50-70 (although the hideously expensive solid state drives are not affected as yet), add to that the usual bump in in price to artificially help the 'sales' come January for electronics and you may end up better waiting until March where you are almost guaranteed more bang for your buck.
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