If you're looking to game with the laptop, go with the ATI 9600 pro. Heres a link to a comparison of the ATI mobility R9600 and the Nvidia FX5650 Go (the fastest mobile vdo cards available for both of the manufacturers):
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=1866
They show the a number of benchmark results from games like the upcoming HL2 and other DX9 graphics applications/games. (Nvidia get whooped big time)
I'm not sure about the problems that you're mentioning but I'm sure the newest drivers would be able to fix most of them since I've noticed that old drivers are usually the problems that people have.