<p>To the OP:
Looks like your brother is full of brownies. Buy a thinkpad and forget all your compatibility issues. You can play baseball with those things.</p>
<p>check to see if your school has a special deal with microsoft to get free software from them.</p>
<p>at my school there's a 'microsoft software alliance' (i think that's what it's called) where engineering students are allowed to download free copies of microsoft software. office, vista, etc., and i think its a pretty common program.</p>