Recommend a Laptop

Your best bet would probably be a gaming oriented laptop, since they generally have better/faster processors and graphics cards which would make editing better. The lenovo y580 (if it hasn't been replaced with a newer version) is a pretty good sub $1000 one, 1080p 15 inch screen, good metal body, quad core i7, gtx660m <great gpu, especially for the mercury playback engine, it will accelerate stuff a lot. But basically for adobe stuff you need a nvidia gpu and a good processor. A 7200rpm hard drive is also a must (unless you replace it with a ssd). You can also upgrade the ram to 16gb, I think it only comes with 8gb or so.

Also try some sites like adobe forums, overclock.net, tomshardware, anandtech, teksyndicate forums.

Find something that has the following:

-i5 or i7 processor that is 2.8ghz or higher. I wouldnt even conider AMD processors.

-8gb of ram, 16gb is nice but you could upgrade that down the road for $80-100

-nvidia GPU like q said, the gtx6xxM series are solid gpus stick with those for sure, especially if you're using adobe. i wouldnt even consider raedon cards (even though they are good) because adobe uses the CUDA acceleration with nvidia cards and it makes a HUGE difference.

-7200rmp HD or SSD. I swear by SSDs now and they're definitely worth the extra money. For a laptop, id recommend 240 or 256 for your ssd since you can't run a second HD in a laptop very easily. You could do a 120gb ssd + a 1tb external usb 3 drive and be pretty set.

-15" or larger 1080p resolution screen, I have a 17" mbp and I love the screen size, but smaller than 15" will be a pain. you could also buy a nice 23" second monitor for about $100 bucks down the line

-USB 3.0 and sd card reader. USB 3 is awesome and definitely a must IMO you dont NEED a sd card reader but most laptops come with them

As q said, there are definitely good laptops out there for under $1000 and laptops with the stats I have listed will be in the 800-1200 range.

Thank you for the help! I really appreciate it

what he said, amen

I have Samsung series 9 13,3", very good laptop but i have never tried editing on it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834312438

Actually here's another one. Same quad core fast i7, but with a newer, single gpu.

The only thing I would change about what eheath said is the ram. If you find one with all the other specs, but only 4gb, it may be cheaper to upgrade it yourself. I did that with my macbook, tho prices now are much lower, as I just went to 16gb for something like $70. Ram is easy to upgrade, hard drive too, but not always as cheap and easy as ram, and almost everything else is set in stone essentially

SLI in a laptop for video editing is redundant; there won't be any difference from a single mGPU.

It makes no difference if the clock rate is less than 2.8GHz...

agreed. Plus you can oc. But do video editors not take advantage of sli? damn that sucks. Then the 730m or some other single gpu it is.

SLI only increases FPS for gaming. SLI is parallel processing between two GPU's; when the two cards are rendering a frame, one card renders the even lines, while the other renders the odd lines. Alternatively, you can have one card render the first frame, with the other rendering the second, and so on.

Adobe, or any other video software, doesn't utilize parallel processing of graphics.

I am looking at the Lenovo Z580 (i7-3520M, 8gb ram) right now because of the super affordable price, and the specs seem pretty good. I am however computarded, so I was wondering if anyone has any input. It lacks a solid state drive, and the graphics are integrated. How would it handle CS6?

Never, ever OC a laptop. Laptops can't dissipate the heat because of the TDP increase.

Listen to heathster

Good to know, I basically just understood that they worked together, and that they somehow split up the task into two seperate smaller tasks. But as far as laptop recommendation, I was looking and found that basically, there is nothing under $900 ($899.99) that has a 1080p screen and good specs. However you can get a 17.3" notebook which will have a bigger 1600x900 screen, instead of the 1366x768 res on the 15.6" ones.