Amazing Grace on bagpipes almost makes me cry. When Dan Wheldon (IndyCar driver) passed away, the drivers done a 5 lap tribute, and in the background, there was that song on bagpipes - I almost started crying.
I'm not that into computers right now. I just can tell you Toshiba is a great brand, I never had problems with them. However, my HP laptop lasted only 2 years before having many many trouble...
If you want to go to school with it, you should not buy something that's too heavy, so I advice you nothing more than 15,6". And you should give a look to range, it's definitely what's the most important if you want to work on it easily.
As for Kieran, I'd advice you to give a look to something with a RAM > 2GB, which is the minimum if you want to use WIndows 7.