Don’t get Acer. They’re cheap for a reason, mainly because they’re terrible. If I remember correctly, Mike had problems with his when he first got it. He got it fixed but I prefer computers that “just work” from day 1 
Also, don’t get a Dell mini, I’ve never used one that performed well. When I was at NCSU we did a race between the office’s dell mini with SSD and my HP mini with a standard 160GB SATA. They were convinced it would run circles around my “slow piece of crap HP.” My mini was booted into win7 pro, logged in, and at the desktop before the dell mini with a SSD got to the winxp pro login screen.
If you get a mini you can’t swap out the HD without a near complete disassemble. Also, minis don’t have good enough GPUs to be used for TV hookup and most only have a VGA, as opposed to laptops which typically have HDMI.
You should be able to swap out HDs if you buy a regular laptop but you’ll have to reinstall windows on it using a DVD. You’ll also lose your recovery partition.
Before buying a laptop, pull up the maintenance guide and see which parts are user replaceable and how hard it is to swap them out. HP and Dell both provide documentation on this and it really helps to decide what you want it to ship with and what you can upgrade later. RAM, HD, and wireless card are almost always user serviceable and sometimes the processor is too. RAM is almost always cheaper on newegg than the manufacturer UNLESS the manufacturer has one of those “free update to 4GB” deals when it ships with what you want to begin with. HD is usually cheaper to upgrade from the manufacturer but if you want a performance drive they’re usually cheaper on newegg.
Just check prices really well before spending any money.