Opinions/Advice on new PC/Mac

[Dingo Jellybean]

My old computer was REALLY old by Today's standards. It cost $3000 to buy when my dad got it in 1998. It had 233MHz processor, 128MBs RAM, 12.7GB Hard Drive, and Win98 OS. I had it reformatted and now it works and such, but I have to reset everything up(which I don't know how) as the internet doesn't work, the graphics card isn't installed(I can't get resolution higher than 640x400), and such. So I decided to get a new PC/Mac.

Question is, I don't want to spend more than $1000 on a new PC/Mac. I just saw the <a href="http://www.apple.com/macmini/">Mac Mini</a> today and was really impressed with the specs and design of the machine at $500. It is sans keyboard, mouse, and monitor...which I don't really care about. I am seriously thinking about switching OS to a Mac OS Panther, partially due to the F9 button Expose feature and I hear great things about Unix. But I want a laptop to replace my desktop. I don't want to deal with bulky PCs anymore.

I'm not looking for a lot of power, and virtually anything faster than my old PC would be great. I'm looking for something with at least a 1GHz processor, 30GBs of space, and 1GB of RAM. So suggestions would be nice. And basically anything that's portable.

Also, it would be nice if the suggested laptop uses the 7-step algorithm to delete files. I tend to use my PC for a lot of things that involves my bank accounts, social security number, and credit cards.