I suppose it depends on the laptop and how much you are willing to pay.
You can get brand new laptops (from pc world, curry's etc) for £300 - 400 but I would spend the money to get something decent. IBM Thinkpads are very robust and sony vioa are very good but you will pay over £1000 for these.
You have to get something that will last, remember that you will be using this everyday and it needs to be able to cope, good memory/processor etc..
What I would say is that if you buy a second hand laptop, you don't get any kind of support or guarantee so if it blows up or goes wrong you are stuffed.
If poss get hold of the adobe CS2/3 creative suite, this contains the latest versions of photoshop, illustrator and indesign. If you use quark you will need to purchase that seperately.
Sadly these aren't cheap but they are the ones you want...... unless anyone say different?
James
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