If you have a cdburner, you can go to www.linuxiso.org and download whatever distro you want and burn it to cd-r. Make sure you follow their instructions on burning and checking md5sums. If you don't have a burner, www.linuxcd.org will burn the distro of your choice from the list that they have, then mail it to you. This costs money, but you are just paying for the cost of the cd-r, labor, and shipping. The laptop comes down to how much you are willing to pay. I'm sure you can get a fairly cheap quality laptop though. Good luck.