Small form factor gaming laptop

What size are you looking for? 11" (netbook)?

I think alienware makes 11" laptops with sandy bridge i7 builds and can assumingly be configured for discreet GPU and 8gb+ RAM.

Decent price tag? I doubt it.

Size doesn't really affect the cost of a laptop much, you are paying for parts, so going 11" rather then 15/17 doesn't make it much cheaper.

Alienware has recently discontinued production on the 11" laptop, so its possible there might be some decent deals on them.

I bought the 2nd revision of that laptop w/i5, 8gb ram, discrete GPU for $670 about a year ago.

For a decent price, hell no. That's a niche design that hardly anyone would buy, so you'd pay through the nose for it.

Ahh, well not surprising that it was discontinued, I imagine it is a very niche item. It does seem to still be available on dell for the time being, so if that is something that interests you, get it while it's available.

The next option is going up to a 13" ultrabook, in which high performance parts are more common, and made by a number of more affordable manufacturers. Not quite as small as a netbook, but still designed to be portable and lightweight.

Nvidia is trying to push OEMs to incorporate their GPUs into Ultrabook designs but that's as close as you're going to get if it ever happens as AMD is not interested in putting a battery sucking GPU into their own platform for thin notebooks and they are not using the regular mobile APUs for it either.

From what I read, AMD has an APU design similar to the ULV CPUs that Intel is using in it's Ultrabook platform, but it's definitely NOT on par with the regular APU lines as far as performance goes because it's intended to maximize power savings with balanced performance. Don't worry though, things will clear up as designs move forward. Right now, the whole sub-15 inch notebook market is rather murky and it will stay that way until the holidays when things really roll out.

It was the Alienware M11x. I'm pretty sure the only reason I was able to get it as cheap as I did was b/c they were moving on to an updated model (the one they are currently selling.) It didnt come with an SSD though, not sure if it does now. Since its been discontinued, who knows, maybe you can call them and haggle with the price.

Origin PC just announced a sweet little gaming notebook platform. 11-inches, Ivy Bridge, and Nvidia graphics with power-saving Optimus hardware and the usual bells and whistles you find on a good notebook.

Why are you whispering? lol