I have had some problems too.
As far as I can tell the games think the laptop card is better than it is, similar to a laptop. As a result the "default settings for your machine" are way off. Try and manually turn down the graphics settings, switch off any power saving modes and don't use directx 10 settings. Will try the aero thing too myself.
One other thing I found was the driver updates for desktops do not apply for laptops. You normally have to go to the computer makers site to down load "special" ones. I am using a driver 6 months old on my Sony, however the desktop version has been updated since, nothing for the laptop yet...hmmm
In all it's not great, and whiffs of a bit of a con. However you should be able to play nearly all modern games on a good laptop..