Bioware released a GUI toolset for Dragon Age: Origins on the PC; It was used to develop the game. When I mod the game with the toolset I am usually modifying textures or character models by changing the variables in the GUI & the editing files they may reference in an editor like Photoshop. So a Bioware developer doesn't need programming skill to do some of the footwork in game development. Programmers use the toolset also. I don't know much about it, Bioware runs a wiki for the toolset that describes a script as similar to C.

Just a wild guess from the performance and occasional errors on my machines, Dragon Age: Origins is a programming catastrophe and their standards aren't very high, anyway.

Aside from that, these people have cult followings in the company's fanbase. The guy could be a good choice for consulting alone or maybe just a PR move.

An OEM's workstation brands, followed by other professional brands. I try to be an astute shopper but OEMs will just sell outright lemons retail. A minority of customers can actually hold OEMs accountable for the value of their money. These customers are businesses who buy decades or hundreds of laptops for their workforce. They are businesses who need very powerful mobile workstations for something like media production. Business brand laptops are frequently bought in bulk so while they're more expensive than their consumer line they will be a better buy than an equal Macintosh.

Some features to look forward to are things like a higher quality chipset and/or bios, security features in the bios, hard drive speed, quality of the power brick and durability of its cords, signal strength of the wireless card, quality contrast & color accuracy screen, aluminum or matte chasis, and elegance in the internal components for repair or upgrade. You can configure these for some features that are really out there but great choices for a consumer laptop, like Raid 0 solid state hard drives or fingerprint readers $40 for fingerprint reader is completely frivolous but I love them because I like to pretend I'm James Bond when I use mine.

From Dell I bought my Vostro notebook and my Precision workstation and they have been great computers while the Inspiron is a joke.