Looking to buy a laptop, any kind in particular?

for school and gaming.

A dell xps is excellent. It has top of the line processors, memory, and graphics. its slim, stylish, has a built in web cam, and a fingerprint reader. And you can get an optional 4 year warranty, accidental damage, and lo jack. Starting at $999, you can get one with features you are looking for and warranty for about $1600 with tax.
If you are looking to spend less money, an inspiron is also a great choice, although it lacks some features. starting at $499. About $1200 for what you are looking for.

Apple Macbook pro since all new games are coming out for Mac and Apple just roxxx.....no viruses, error craps you need to deal w/ Vista.

the hp tablet pcs are really cool with the stylus and touch screen that rotates

dell for sure.
you cannot game on a mac that is for dam sure
most hps suck when comparing there basic configurations to that of almost any other current laptop on the market.

Get a Macbook. You CAN game on them (my son is a gamer and plays all the time). You can use Office for Mac which is just like Office for PCs. You can also get iWork which has Pages and Numbers in it which are the Mac equivalents to Word and Excel respectively. Dell laptops are unreliable. My husband and I have them through our job and they are unreliable and problematic. HPs are okay if you can't afford a Macbook, but for reliability and ease of use, seriously consider getting a Macbook.

i have a macbook and i absolutely love it. its a little expensive but its totally worth it.

IBM is boring, but they are EXTREMELY hard to break.
Dell is so-so, they like to use special hardware to jack up the price of upgrading.
Apple is nice but you do pay quite a bit more and aren't really meant to be able to be upgraded.
HP aren't doing that well this cycle, so don't get one of thier laptops with the black top and the security hole on the left (they break a lot).
Gateway is fine along with Compaq as far as I've heard.

If you want to break out of the mold
Widow PC has one of the best support plans in the business.
Cyberpower Inc. will get you something good on the cheap.
Falcon Northwest will charge you a pretty penny, but the only people that could try to match them in performance is a brand new top-of-the-line XPS.