Greetings and salutations, friends!

I have come seeking assistance in finding the right new laptop for me. My current laptop is the Toshiba Qosmio F60-00M. It has lasted me a good 4-5 years, and has always played anything I put on it, though often on lower settings. I have only had to replace the battery a year or two ago, and I just had to have the hard drive replaced. My Dad was surprised how long it lasted, and wants to get me a new one in April.

So far, I have had quick looks at the following-
-A new Toshiba Qosmio
-Lenovo
-Alienware
-Asus (On Newegg.ca)

I live in Canada, so Canadian sites would be best but I can look at US as well.

I am leaning towards another Qosmio, since I had such great luck with my current machine, but my dad has heard good things about Lenovo, how the military uses them, etc. I looked at Alienware and wasn't too impressed with what I saw for the prices, though it is nice that they offer smaller screen sizes than Qosmio that are also a little bit cheaper (I was mainly looking at the 14 series they had). My Netbook, which I use for school work, writing, and other non gaming things, is Asus and has worked out pretty good, so I had a look at them on Newegg.

Generally, my gaming laptop just sits on my desk for the majority of the year. But, I still don't want to get a desktop for my gaming computer since I often end up travelling to Trinidad, and to Europe, to visit family and such.

I would like to stick below $1500 for a budget. I'm not too picky about screen size, but smaller would be preferred to something huge. I don't need the latest and greatest in Graphics, it's not my bag, if you catch my drift. What I would like is a machine that can finally play Skyrim on high settings, will be able to play newer games decently, and still be going in 4 years or so. Something that is reliable. I don't need an OS, but most laptops seem to come with them so that's fine.

I am somewhat computer savvy, and I'm sure I could pick out a pretty good machine, but since I have so much time to decide what to do I wanted to get advice and opinions from other cool people. I'm hoping to get from this thread: Recommendations for Laptops as well as companies I should look at over others, and more info on parts and how it affects the machine (ie: The difference between a Nvidia Geforce 745M and a 760M, how will 16gbs of RAM be better than 8, etc etc.) If you were getting a new Laptop right now, what would you be getting?

I look forward to hearing from you!