I'm using a Sony Vaio with Windows 7 OS and it hasn't dissapointed me yet! It was pretty cheap considering what I got for it and how it is performing, only ⬠1000,-. =)
But wait... recalculating it back to $ would make it $ 1294,50. Meh, still within your price range!
be sure to check reviews because most laptops under that price are prone to overheating and hang ups. also do not over try overclocking a laptop because the fan and heat sink (or fansink) will be able to keep the CPU and GPU at 60C. i would suggest a desktop and forget about portability because of this.
Your best bet is really to just get a desktop that can run about anything and a medium range laptop that can run a few games but not all. That way you can play your desktop at home with the few good games like Newer COD's and Skyrim, the works.
Since you mentioned TF2 you really dont need much. Valve games seem to rely more on RAM and the Processor to play and some on the graphics but TF2 is so old that i think you only need a graphics card that has like 512 MB of ram. But the processor seems to be a big deal with that game. Because everytime I run that game it is extremely slow for first couple of minutes. I guess it could just be updates.
But other than that here is a (well I cant click the link button for whatever reason) but here http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2020688,00.asp I guess copy and paste that. Top 10 gaming laptops by PcMag
