Hi Dan,
Thanks for posting your PC specs and telling me it is a laptop. You made it easy for me

From what I read Modern Warfare 3 should have similar requirements as Black Ops. The 3 main PC specs everyone needs to worry about are CPU, RAM and Graphics processor.
CPU: Intel Core i7 Q720. This will run Black Ops
RAM: 6 GB. Triple the minimum amount required.
Graphics: nVIDIA GeForce GT 320M. Although this is not one of the faster laptop graphics cards out there it definitely passes the minimum required graphic card needed to run MW3.
I recommend going into the MW3 graphics settings before you play and set everything to the absolute lowest. Play for 15 minutes. If everything is running super smooth then bump up the graphics settings to something a little higher. If it is still smooth bump it up more. Keep on doing this until the game starts to slow down. This is what I usually do to judge how high I can set the graphic details in games on my home gaming PC.