The industry is split between FinalCut and Avid which will run on a PC. Colleges and Unis will use one or the other, usually depending on whether they are Mac or PC biased.
The Uni I worked at went the Avid route on PC's, and they hire out the edit suites out-of-hours to production companies so I think that vouches for it's industry recognition.
As for a laptop, just keep searching the net, you need a very good spec for this stuff though as it's very heavy on resources. Get as much RAM as possible with a fast processor and a quick hard disk as it's heavy on that too. PC wise, I'm not sure if Avid will run on Vista, it's very picky, but I haven't looked in to it for a while.
Apple wise, I have no idea as I think they're PC's for idiots