the lag or freeze is coming from how crappy your laptop is, mine has the same problem not as bad it seems but still an annoience(sp)
there is no way around this unless you spend like you said about $100 or more making your computer pimp
thats why i also prefer video game consoles and heard they will come out with a console called the Phantom that plays computer games without installing (if you have the cd but if you dont you have to install
anyways)...this was a while back so i dont know if they junked it or not