Buying new gaming laptop need help picking out upgrades

An alienware would be ULTRA MEGA SUPER DUPER OVERKILL.

Your current Computer is more than powerful enough to play sims 3

You're not going to need much to play Sims 3, so don't go overkill it'd be a waste of money and a waste of power, better equipment usually means more power so if you'll be using the battery for it at all that's another thing you'll need to consider. if you won't be using the battery much, why buy a laptop in the first place?

Well, back when LAN parties were big, a 10 lb Dell XPS gaming laptop with highend GPU, CPU and 17" WUXGA screen was a lot more portable than a minitower with handles & wheels. Of course, I am not aware of any LAN parties ever featuring any version of the SIMS  

Not to mention anytime you want to travel & take your gaming PC with you, such as vacation or in my case, the occasional business trip, plus watching movies during flights when the onboard movies sucked was kinda fun too. In other words, if you find a laptop necessary or even just extremely useful, then why not spend a few extra bucks and get one that is good for entertainment & games?

However if you take your lappy to business meetings with clients, don't get a blinged-out one with strobing, color-changing case lights and fire-engine red case color - even though they may be secretly jealous of it, it doesn't look too professional  . Dell's XPS series is being discontinued in favor of their Alienware subsidiary, IIRC, but you can get the XPS 1730s in fairly subdued case colors and you can turn off the case lights when necessary. Decent audio too with 1-watt speakers plus a subwoofer. And a backlit keyboard is handy on late flights as well. Only thing not to like is the price  ...

My current computer though is 4 years old and plays it really slow and choppy and the graphics aren't good. So you're saying if i bought the new macbrook pro laptop for around $1200, that's plenty?