What would you do.. Computer Dilema

[bullshark]

I have somewhat of a difficult decision to make. I came into a small amount of money (thanks to beloved grandma passing away). I've dedicated 1/5 of it to upgrading my computing setup. (the other 4/5 are going to my vacation in march/and a few gifts for the gf and maybe small amount of photo gear)..

My needs and what I have now:
-Must have a laptop, not necessarily for heavy photo editing, a little photoshop, some capture NX which is kinda taxing.. Even when running photoshop we arent talking anything incredible, maybe10 layers with small amounts of pixel data in each. Maybe a lightroom pass or two. Mostly used for portability and internet browsing/putzing around..

-I have a desktop that I do the majority of my editing on.. Its a pentium 4 2.0Ghz overclocked to 2.3Ghz with 1Gb RAM (homebuilt 4 years ago, Motherboard/Memory is starting to show signs of occasional glitching, ever expanding problems with USB2.0). Capture NX runs slow, Photoshop runs eh, and lightroom runs eh as well. Running XP Pro.

I have a 300 dollar gift card to Best Buy to play with so that puts me at $1300 for a new setup... My old laptop display is broken and I promised I would fix it and give it to my GF so I MUST get a new laptop and I would ALSO like an upgrade or new desktop to more suit my needs. A MacBook Pro at 2,000 is not something I'm willing to consider, photo editing is not my bread and butter at the moment and I cant justify it. I was kicking around the HP DV2715nr for the laptop but I'm still not sure if it will handle even the lightest of photo editing that I would be doing on it. Whatdya think? Also a little torn as to whether or not I should upgrade just the ram on my Desktop to maybe 2 or 4 GB, or just buy a cheapo pre-built tower only, most of which have more updated memory and processing than I'm currently using but more expensive than just the RAM upgrade..

My goal is to get my needs covered as well as possible for as cheap as possible (which is not normally my style, I'm an over-doer).. Best bang for the buck style.. I know its off-topic for a photo forum, but please weigh in if you have an opinion..

PS- Here is the link to the HP..
www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8654048&produc...

Or if you would recommend some other laptop manufacturer/model.