Yes – a laptop is capable of making music… The only rider is that you need (as GL says) a decent sound card – USB, Firewire (as long as your lappy supports it), or PCMCIA…. Go for something like an M-audio or a Lexicon (cost somewhere around the £100 mark, but well worth it)….

I’ve been running sound software on my PC for about 15 years now – the hardware you can get today is easily more than capable of running any of the software you might want to run (and even though the minimum requirements lead you to believe you need an ultra modern PC, take them with a pinch of salt – I remember v3 of Reason saying you needed a 1GHz cpu, 256meg of RAM etc etc… I managed to get it running and playing all the demo tracks on a P2-250 with 128 meg of RAM)…

Go for something like an Acer, or a Fujitsu – they’re nice and cheap, and will do everything you’ll need (try and make sure you get one with Windows XP though – Vista is a spectacular resource hog, and will waste the shiny hardware)…

The only other things it might be worth investing in are a hard disk upgrade (most laptops have 5400rpm drives – get an upgrade to a 7200rpm one – relatively easy to fit yourself if necessary), and a control surface (trying to make music with a mouse/keyboard usually ends up with you making seriously robotic and dull music. A control surface will give you some artistic hands on feel to your music creation…)