jamesb, I have two laptops. One is a 3 year old compaq with windows xp and the other is a 2 year old mac book pro I bought on ebay for about $1600. If I were to make a recommendation to anyone, it would be, buy a mac. Have an old desktop laying around with windows but overall the mac experience is best and works with every program I'll ever need.
Two years ago I purchased a windows vista unit for my wife and it's nearly caused divorce. Today, the only windows computer you can purchase is one with Vista and I'm here to tell ya, it sucks big time compared to my mac and my wife would agree.
It wasn't until recently that I updated that 3 year old windows laptop with the suggested updates from Microsoft and immediately after updating I caught a virus. I've been deleting programs and battling this thing for nearly a month. The windows computer is slow now and surfing the net with Norton is a pain. Gradually this has pushed me towards utilizing the mac more and the more I use it the more I dislike Microsoft computers.
No matter what you do, windows should not be an option and I could go on all day with reasons why not but in the end, buy a mac.
Now I told you I have a macbook pro and it happens to have a 17" monitor... It's the big dog with 4 gig of ram etc etc. A macbook will suffice and frankly, I wouldn't mind the smaller computer which can be picked up for under a thousand at
AffordableMacs.com. You can upgrade the ram to 4 gig for under $100. It will do everything you need plus more.
This is my opinion based on experience and working from home with computers for a living. BUY A MAC!
Hope this helps!