I'll second the RAM advice, but you may be better off researching how high it will upgrade to versus how high it is from the factory. Sometimes they mark up the price of factory-installed RAM vs RAM you can put in yourself, and memory is one of the few user-installable upgrades for a notebook. As far as your wife's gaming, what does she play? Some gaming is more system-intensive than other gaming.

With the "good video" and lots of memory qualifications said, I'll tell you what I've been telling my family lately (I build desktops so they all ask me) ... notebooks are pretty much disposable. You'll use it for a few years then replace the whole thing, so brand is not really that important. Buy the cheapest one that fits the bill.