What should we look for in a laptop for our son for school work as well as playi

How old is your son, and do you have a budget?

Any modern dual core laptop will have sufficent compute power.

If portability, like taking it to class is required, then an ultrabook is the way to go.
But, the graphics capability for gaming will be limited. It should be sufficient for strategy games such as civ-4, but not first person shooter type games.

If you need fast action gaming, then you want a laptop with a strongish discrete graphics chip, and they will be more expensive and less portable.

If price is not much of an issue, buy a laptop with a SSD, or replace a stock laptop drive with a SSD. The performance difference is remarkable.

It is probably easier if you fill this out and let us find a laptop for you. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/50797-35-laptop-buyer... We could still tell you why me made those spec choices if you'd like

you can look here at the Deals section - there are several laptops in the list that will fit the bill
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/d-link-media-player-de...

Thank you for the info! We settled on an Asus intel Core i5 laptop.