A laptop is on my want list however several friends who recently bought one with Vista wish they have their old ones back with Windows.
Is Vista all that bad? Since I'm not a pro at using a PC, would I be disappointed having had Windows XP?
Save yourself a LOT of headaches....
buy an intel mac...
it will run Vista ( if you are masochistic enough to want to try that route)
With a little resourcefulness it will run Windows XP64 ( BootCamp does not install drivers for XP64... but you can find them online and install them yourself)
It will run Linux or Unix...
AND it will run the Mac OS... which is essentially impervious to viruses, worms and Trojan horses... ( 19 years without a single virus, myself )
Is vastly easier to use and operate... has no problems with migrating to new systems ( always backward compatible, unlike Vista)
Is prettier, smoother, and comes with a much better suite of pre-installed software... and astonishingly powerful software that is cheap like water... ( iWeb, Garage Band, iDVD, Keynote, iMovie, iPhoto, iCal, Pages, iSync....and more)
AND, using a program like Fusion... you can run BOTH Mac OS and Windows at the same time!
Once you have spent some time using the Mac OS... you will never want to do windows again...