Sounds like a good reason to me to go for a portable that you can tuck away or do stuff on a other place. IMHO if you go for portable, get one of the big ones (physically) with limited batterylife (= using desktop components = cheap) with a low spec cpu, USB2, max amount of ram you can afford and the biggest screen that is a good price/screen estate ratio. Then add a 500gb USB drive(s) as vmware/VirtualBox or other virtual stuff eats your HDD space as candy.

ha, and second hand portables are almost as expensive as new ones, so might better spend 100 usd more and get a new one in promotion.
This one has 2gb ram for example: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1195599779433
550 usd
Please don't feel like a "idiot". I ask everyday several "stupid" questions, that's to only way to advance in life: trying to find knowledge in the ridiculous amount of information we have at hand.
...
and to learn for other ones mistakes (which is pretty hard to do)...

But something say's me not comment on all the things said before on EEE vs laptop so i'll shut up