Cheap Gaming Laptop

Hi, I'm looking to buy a laptop for my little brother (a casual gamer) and would like some advice. If it were up to me, I'd just build him a solid gaming desktop and be done with it, since it would be a much more reliable and more "bang for buck" option. Unfortunately, he is ferried between two different households, and likes to game in the various family places, so even a LANbox is too limiting. The last two gaming laptops both died from motherboard failure, an Alienware M5550 and an HP DV2000. Here's what I'm looking for:

Budget: 500-750
Screen Resolution: Unimportant
Portability: Unimportant
Battery Life: Unimportant
Games: BF2, BF1942, COH, Civ3/4, Age of Empires/Mythology - All on low
Other Tasks: He watches a lot of online video - Hulu, Netflix, etc.
Storage: Unimportant
Expected to be used for 2-3 years
Brands: A semi-reputed brand sure would be nice, but specifically, just looking for best value.
OS: Unimportant - Will make driver disk, reformat and install Ubuntu, XP and 7.
Country: USA

I'm really just looking for a laptop with a decent graphics card, one that won't get overly bogged down. I realize the budget is very low, I don't expect to be able to find a M17x equivalent, just something that will technically play the games it needs to.

Thanks in advance for any and all help,

-Wizkid