Hello. I am wondering if I might get a few words of advise from some of you experts. I have a Dell XPS 710 and an old Inspiron 8500 laptop. I am wanting to replace both of them with one fairly high end (as high end as I can afford anyway) laptop for work stuff but also for gaming. I have been looking at a few different laptops but haven't been able to decide. Here's what I have narrowed it down to:

- An HP Envy 17 with an i7-720QM processor and a 1GB Mobility Radeon HD 5850 video card
- A Dell Alienware M17x with an i5-520M processor and a 1GB Mobility Radeon HD 5870 video card
- A Sony VAIO EC with an i5-540 processor and a 1GB Mobility Radeon HD 5650 video card

I have heard good things about Sony's VAIO. They are comparably priced but their best gaming machine doesn't have quite the horsepower I was wanting in a video card.
The Dell machine would be ideal and they certainly look pretty cool but it's a bit out of my price range.
I am leaning kind of towards the HP Envy. It has pretty decent power and is within my price range. But I have read a number of reviews talking about the problems it has with getting too hot and having issues with shutting down from the heat or at least being uncomfortable
to operate because it gets so hot.
I have also looked at some somewhat off brands like an MSI that is almost identical to the HP Envy as far as what it has in it, but There again I saw reviews talking about overheating problems.
If I got one of those cool pads or chill mats, would that be enough to keep the thing from melting down even during moderate to intense gaming?
If anyone has any suggestions of other makes/models I would be forever in your debt. I am certainly not dedicated to any of these machines although I have owned a number of Dells and they have been pretty much trouble free for the most part (and those Alienware machines look so cool!)

Mostly flying and racing sims. I play FSX quite a bit, CFS3, GTR2, rFactor, a few other sims. I play some FPS stuff once in a while like UT and Q3A but I don't have much interest in any of the stuff everyone is playing now like Warcraft or Call of Duty (?). I can run FSX on my desktop at moderate to high settings but nothing spectacular. I would like a laptop that can at least do better than that. My budget is only around $1,500, plus or minus a hundred or so. As much as I would love that Dell M17x, it's about $1,800 base price and by the time you add a bit more RAM and a couple other necessities, it's well over $2,000 which I just can't do right now.