O waily, waily me!

(Title borrowed from Terry Pratchett's A Hat Full of Sky.)

Here I am sitting at the staff workroom in my new school typing on an iMac. No, I'm not a convert and I probably never will be. The school's great. ******ment's tons better than where I came from and I think that the head honchos have got their heads screwed on right (I hope).
So why the pensive proclamation in the title? My personal computing brick is coming in tomorrow and it looks pretty bleak...
Let's do a little list:

1) They're Gateway notebooks. (company pulled out of Singapore in 2001)
2) They're running Windows XP on 160mb RAM. (For anyone who doesn't know what that means, think of a Mack truck running on a Proton Kancil (mousedeeer) engine.)
3) IT department gave out standard issue rollerball mice.
4) The laptops are reminiscent of bricks.

Aaarrgh!
Considering the fact that I am a teacher who is totally dependent on the computer (working on transparencies tends to end up with fingerprint smudges on my shirt along with melted pieces of plastic...) that leaves me pretty screwed...
Spent the morning basically surfing the net for notebook prices and wistfully making goo goo eyes at the Alienware Area 51 7700. (Probably the coolest notebook out there bar none)
*igh.