Following Square Trade's laptop three year reliability survey: Asus and Toshiba had least failures (followed by Sony and Apple) and HP had the most failures at 25%.
Really depends on what you're looking for.
Cheapest gaming laptop with best specs would be a Sager/Clevo. Not the prettiest looking thing. Alienware has a cost premium. Asus isn't using the highest graphics card last I checked.
I know you can get a pretty nice IPS screen on some of the newer Sony laptops but apparently has some red-reproduction issues.
I'm waiting to see reviews on the new Asus Zenbook:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/29/a...onal-nvidia-g/
If you just want business-class sturdiness for traveling probably a Lenovo ThinkPad.