Can someone explain using an external monitor?

I'm really really torn about getting a new laptop. I'm going to be in grad school in August where I'm required to have my laptop in class every day. BUT, I am also a hardcore PC gamer. I would easily get a 17in beast hands down, except for the whole portability thing. It's just too cumbersome. I would never be playing a game away from my apartment sitting at my desk, but for some reason it never occured to me to get a 15.4 inch screen and then just get an external monitor.

So what do I need to know before buying a laptop/external monitor? Does the native res. of the laptop matter in buy an external monitor? If I get a 1440 LCD laptop, will that effect how the picture looks on the external monitor if that isn't the native res. of the monitor? And more importantly, is there any effect on playing games with this setup? It's doubly important for me because I have bad vision that is getting worse and squinting at a laptop screen does not help.

 

The external monitor can have a different resolution than the laptop one, so whichever you like is fine.
No effect ,you can even game on both screens for fun(cloning image)
IF you choose to extend the desktop, it will stress the GPU more, and for that you need DVI

So if your laptop has S-Video out , or DVI you can use an external monitor, both Ati and NVIDIA have special control panels for it,to choose between cloning the desktop,extending it, etc.

 

Eleron said it all

 

Another option you can consider is purchasing a budget notebook and assemble a custom gaming rig yourself. It is possible to do this money-wise since most gaming notebooks range from $2000-3000+.

But of course this depends on your budget and your notebook needs.

 

Remember that your highest resolution with HDMI/VGA is 1920x1200 unless you get DVI/Dual Link DVI, so don't go out and buy an Apple HD Cinema Display (or one similar) and expect it to work unless you have the right kinds of DVI.