I'm thinking about buying meself a notebook computer of some sort
 

I need something that can run Photoshop reasonably fast with ~200Mb large files. I also need it to be relatively cheap and dependable. If it is a PC, I don't want any software, does anyone ever offer this? I don't want anything, I don't even want an opperating system, I want to install all the shit myself on a need-to-use basis. Does anyone out there know of a place that sells Linux laptops?

Also any reason why I shouldn't buy a used laptop over eBay? I can't really think of any, but my father was kinda reluctant to endorse that decision.

Any student discounts I can count on when it comes to macs? Or PCs for that matter?

There are discounts for Apple products if you are a student. What price category are you targeting? If you can afford a 1k+ laptop, you should probably go with a new one. Otherwise, eBay has lots of used cheap IBM Thinkpads, they are pretty good. Just be careful about the battery life on older laptops.

Just be careful on eBay because you can be ripped off. I have been when buying a laptop, anyway. ;) If you do buy off eBay, make sure it's off a seller that specialises in selling laptops on eBay. You might pay a bit more than the other awesome deals you see, but you'll be safe.

Most entry level laptops should be fine for what you're after. You're probably going to want min 768mb ram, but other than that the lowest of the low laptops should handle it without any drastic performance issuesl.

Thats my opinion anyway.

well, here goes nothing...

Hey Kingz, apple just shipped the intel iBook replacements this week. $1049 is the academic price for the 1.8ghz core duo model, which is a pretty respectable machine (although for mega PSDs,a RAM upgrade might not be unreasonable).

Also, they ship with the OS install CDs, so you can do a wipe and clean install to reclaim space. Most bundled stuff like iLife though can be easily uninstalled by just deleting it.