My mother's determined to wait as long as she can on the laptop because she thinks if I get it too early it will become outdated too quickly.
Hah, that thought goes through my head every time I think about a new computer too. I need to get a laptop for Honours year and postgrad, my time at the Royal Historical Society taught me that, and my mother's quite agreeable to helping out with the purchase. She actually wanted to get me one for last Christmas but a digital camera was higher on my priorities then.
But I have no idea what I want. I think I'd prefer a Windows, but XP, not Vista. Vista can go fuck itself. I find XP easier to use and more user-friendly for what I do than Mac OS X, though it may just be what I'm comfortable with.