What laptop brands are best?

[Jackalope]

For what you've said you are intending on using it for, a 2nd gen Core i5 is plenty. I have two laptops, one with a dual core i5, and the other with a quad core i7, and for the vast majority of tasks, there's not a lot of difference in performance. For games, yes, but that's more due to the difference in GPU performance than CPU.

It would be fine, yeah, but for work, i5 will do, i7 is better. They use processor speed to determine what order they put your webcam room. The better your processor, the more customers you get.

Ah, then i7 it is.

Be sure to look at reviews for battery life if that's something that's important to you. I'm lucky to get 100 minutes out of my work i7 with business/software development apps. My personal i7 I can usually get about twice that, and often quite a bit more - as long as I'm not doing anything that requires the 3D GPU. I have a dual GPU, integrated for 2D, and a dedicated 3D GPU for gaming which is a nice feature for extending battery life.

Having a too-small battery sucks.

---

With the laptop you linked, the processor and memory are fine. I'm not 100% sure about the graphics card.

If it's the 144 shader version of the GT630M, that's about equal to the GT555M. The 96 shader version is closer to the GT540M.

Either should be more than adequate for WoW.

I have a GT555M - the newest game I have is Skyrim and it runs it very well.