Aren't they a lot of work?

My mum for instance has developed quite a big bingo addiction - my dad quizzed her about what she is spending her wages on (she's always skint), and she admitted that it's all going on online bingo. It's mental - I checked her account on gala myself and one night she put £80 in, got £16 back through two small wins I think, but she still bet all that away. She said to my dad that she won't go on them again but she already has.

My brother Carl is like the complete opposite to me - Well we're both emotional but in two different ways. Emotional for me usually means sadness, for Carl it only means anger. He has a severe temper and I've warned him before that he'll lose everything if he isn't careful, I even told him that I hoped little Oliver didn't turn into him at one point. For example he was round ours today picking up Oliver and then he looked for his wallet which his girlfriend had supposedly put in a carrier bag for him, yet he couldn't find it, all he would say is "I'M GONNA FUCKING KILL HER, SHE'S FUCKING USELESS", and stormed about the house looking for it, all while Oliver could hear the shouting and swearing. Guess what, he found the wallet outside our house, HE dropped it. Overreaction much? He'll likely have a heart attack in his 30's.

My other brother Daniel, bless him, great guy really, just unlucky. His girlfriend (the first girl he ever has really loved) has cancer of the ovaries and basically she needs to have them taken out, but at the moment she is refusing, she says "Without my ovaries, they may as well kill me" - Obviously she wanted to have kids someday and Dan would make a fantastic father too. So I believe right now she is just refusing, but without them taken out she will only have a year left to live, and she blindly won't let my brother help much thinking it's just her problem and I don't think she's up for sterilizing eggs and such.

My dad - the other unlucky one, he likes a bet as well, not as addicted though as mum and Carl can be, but he does have a bet everyday. Well he couldn't really afford to put a bet on the other day, yet he still picked out three horses he would have put into a bet called a Lucky Fifteen (basically it's hard to explain, but you pick 4 horses, they don't all have to win, if each wins, the odds they win at are multiplied somehow and you make money that way then by doing the horses as single bets - You just pay more for the bet). Well yeah, the 3 horses he picked out won, he had no idea if he would have had a winner or loser as the 4th horse, but with those 3 alone he would have won easily over a grand.. Naturally he didn't work out how much he should have won, he felt sick enough as it was.

And I must be somewhere between the two extremes that the rest of my family are - Idiotic and unlucky - Me in a nutshell.

Yess we all gamble in this house - my mum and dad met in a betting shop, my dad owned one for several years, he can control how much he does, mum can't with bingo, and my brother Carl can't at all. Dan doesn't gamble too much and I myself like a game of cards on the quiet.

Anyway, to help Carl stop gambling as well I offered to buy his laptop off him - I don't really want it, though I do need one, it's just to help him so he can't sit at home and look at betting sites, offered him a decent price of £250 and he has now accepted. The things I do for my family eh? I could really use that money to just save but despite the annoyance I love my family very much, and I don't want him to ruin his relationship because of his anger. There's a baby to think about there.

So yeah I'M GETTING A LAPTOP - ONLY A FEW MONTHS OLD REALLY, WHAT'S GOOD STUFF TO DOWNLOAD/USE GUYS?

Also, Vista or XP? It has Vista, but I may downgrade thanks to a guy I know at work, any opinions?