I want to know why are you going for Laptops if you don't want to travel much, because yes laptop are not that much powerful as desktop computers. But if you want to go with Laptop I will say one thing go for more Hard disk space than 250 GB , I am having 2TB hard disk on my desktop computer.
There is always good to have more. <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />
Hope this helps.