[Syd Thrift]

Honestly we've reached a point to where unless you're playing a lot of non-OOTP games most laptops you can buy now have the ability to to pretty much what you want with them. I bought a Mac laptop specifically because I didn't want to be tempted to put all kinds of games and crap on it but if you don't care about that you can get a pretty reasonable PC laptop for a few hundred dollars. It may be more expensive than a DIY desktop but, well, you do get to drop it in your backpack and take it with you wherever you go. That's kind of a key for me - often I'm very rarely at home except when I want to sleep and I'd rather have a computer around when I get an hour or two free in between projects at work or before a class.

YMMV of course but again, unless you're playing first person shooters or something a laptop that does the job is not generally going to be prohibitively expensive.