What laptop do you use? Would you use? Which programs/applications?
What I use personally is a Chromebook. Yes, it is Chrome OS, but I've been doing all of my tutorials and basic apps this way and I really enjoy it.
You will need to look into Crouton which establishes a chroot of a Linux environment: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton. Once you have this all set up, you can just run the Linux environment as a shell prompt. This allows you to use a text editor such as Caret (great free sublime clone that works as an extension), and test your app locally on ChromeOS.
This post was very helpful in getting started up: https://medium.com/on-coding/setup-a-complete-local-developm...
For example, within the chrome tab that includes my Linux terminal, I can run 'rails new sampleapp', then 'rails s' and open up localhost:3000 where my local rails app displays. I can modify the project directory in caret and push to git using again the Linux terminal. Sorry if I rambled on, I just really enjoy that setup on a $200 laptop.
Both run archlinux with i3 as window manager so I usually don't really notice perforamnce issues on the netbook.
For an editor I was always a fan of vim but I recommend using what you are comfortable with. IDEs like Eclipse are nice but if performance is at a premium I recommend jsut sticking to an editor and a shell.
Version control i would recommend git.
The laptop doesn't really matter, but I hate doing any sort of development in windows, so I'd either buy a macbook (second choice) or get a Dell or something and install ubuntu or arch on it.