I'm doing graphic design too and for school I bought a "normal" laptop. It really doesn't matter if you buy a Mac or a PC. As travisowens said, it's the hardware that matters, not software. Photoshop/Illustrator works fine on OSX as well as Windows. But if you want them to run smoothly you should get at least 2GB ram and a fast HDD, processors are not that important, well maybe important for heat/battery usage but not for running the sofware. And I woulnd't buy a 17 inch. laptop unless you're gonna replace it with your desktop. Those things are heavy and no fun carrieng around al day.