Up until about 6 months ago I had played WoW exclusively on a laptop both single and multi boxed. The reason I got the lappy was that it was a perk from work basically and they let me configure a Dell XPS M1710. Initially it had 2GB RAM, 7200RPM HDD Nvidia 7950 512MB video and centrino 7400 2GHz dual core CPU.

This served me fine multiboxing all through TBC although areas where there were lots of details to load such as AV or Shatt, it would slow to single figure FPS. As such, when I got my team to 80, I bought my new desktop with SSDs, i7, 12GB RAM and GTX 295. The difference in performance is night and day obviously.

If you need a laptop I would have no problems selecting one for gaming, but as the above comments have mentioned, it will not be a proposition on batteries and it will likely be a big, heavy, hot machine. If you are happy with this then by all means laptop it up. The above configs should be fine, although as mentioned, more RAM and an intel SSD HDD would be very worthwhile upgrades although possibly not in your budget.

The video RAM of 1GB should be fine, but a mobile 4650 is not a particularly strong chip and if you were able to find something with a 4870 or a mobile 280GTX that would probably be ideal. It has been a while since I have shopped for laptops so I don't know if you could find a config like this in your price range, but they would be my recommendations. I would prioritise the upgrdes as RAM, then SSD, then GFX.

Cheers