I'm getting a laptop, and I'm too stupid to tell if the one I like is any good

[Lemur]

The graphics card is prolly going to be the deciding factor. According to this site, the GTX 280M (for mobile) is roughly equivalent to a desktop 8800 GTS, which should handle EB and RTW easily.

Nice thing about the two laptops you specced out is that they have 15" screens and good video cards. Most laptops that have high-end video cards sport 17" screens, which is a bit much for a mobile card. You should probably be able to play just about any AAA title for a while with that rig.

-edit-

By way of comparison, the current iteration of the Macbook Pro only sports a 9600M videocard, which is a steep step down. As nice as Apple laptops are, I wouldn't recommend it over the Novatch you linked.