What is essential in a laptop for Hoster?

[jdgraylp]

I've been a DJ/KJ show for the past five years and up until now have been running my show with a duel deck cd player. I think I'm just about ready to take the plunge and buy a laptop so that I can improve the quality of my show. I'm planning to run both Hoster and PCDJ from my laptop.
My dilemma is this. I really can't afford $3700.00 for your laptop. It's very nice... but I just don't have that much money available. Please tell me what is essential for me to have in a laptop to be able to run Hoster. Is there a way around the CD+G drive, and if not, where could I get one of those drives to install into my laptop?

Thanks for all your help!

DJDave