I love the raspberry pi, I have a few of them and learnt a lot with them. I have a home server running on one, and did some ADS-B plane tracking with another.
Do you consider the raspberry as a replacement for you laptop? If you haven't worked with the devices before I think I wouldn't recommend that. Not because it's not possible (it is), but it might need a bit of time to set it up and get familiar with it.
RE: Raspberry Pi(e) - an inedible but intriguing little robot