Hi Barb,
Your laptop will do just fine.
Just to emphasize Mike's point, if you want to make prints or share images online then you must, repeat must, get your monitor calibrated. Reason: all monitors exhibit colour drift over time, so for example what appears yellow on your uncalibrated screen may come out slightly orange when you print, or when you post on the web and I look at your picture on my properly calibrated monitor. When you calibrate a monitor the output of your video-card is re-mapped to what is actually appearing on your screen, and everything will then be just fine.
The best way to do this is to buy the necessary bit of hardware, and calibrate regularly. I personally use the Spyder2 Express which is made by Colorvision. Very simple to use, and it costs about $100 so it is a relatively small investment. I am sure there are other equivalents which are also very good. The process only takes five minutes or so each time, and you will not regret it.
Best of luck with your introduction to Digital SLRs and RAW processing. These boards are a great source of knowledge, and there are some very experienced and talented people (I'm not one of them) who are only too happy to help and advise.
Ed