Techbargains.com also is a great place to check.

These are all scripting languages ie based on Jquery so you cant write any server side code wihout a machine like you said but that shouldn't put you off as these days with jquery, html5, knockout, angular and more coming out all of the time it's a great time to learn.  Learning HTML would always be a good place to start then maybe jquery as all of these new scripting languages run on javascript / jquery then look at the learn knockout.js and learn angular - i prefer knockout at the moment as i've been using it longer but in time angularjs is gonna be massive as it's written and maintained by Google and is incredibly easy to use once the penny drops.

I use pluralsight for my courses but you have to pay - luckily my work pays for me so jobs a good un.

Good luck and if you need any help / info just pm me and i'll help you however I can.

Links (in order of where i think you should start)

http://www.w3schools.com/js/js_htmldom.asp

http://www.htmldog.com/guides/html/beginner/

http://www.w3schools.com/jquery/

http://learn-angular.org/

http://learn.knockoutjs.com/

http://www.pluralsight.com/training

Its good, but seems kinda expensive though.

Ok, so I had a stressful day at work yesterday and as such have nearly sold myself on a dramatic upsell as a pick-me-up (given I haven't bought a new computer in about 5 years, that isn't quite as fiscally irresponsible as it sounds ).

Does anyone have any thoughts on the below? Anything in particular I am missing? Recommendations at the price point? Metabox is one of the few (if not the only decent) laptop customizers in Australia - but if people think they have a better configuration I am all ears, as you're likely better versed than me.

15.6" FHD (1920 x 1080) Matte
Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M
i7-4710MQ
16GB 1600MHZ
Plextor 256GB SSD
1TB 7200RPM HDD
802.11ABGN / Bluetooth
Blu-ray Reader / DVD +- R/RW DL
Windows 8.1 64BIT

http://www.metabox.com.au/store/b86/Metabox-Alpha-W355SS-CTG02-Laptop

Basic coding? you mean programming?

I do!

What'd you wanna learn? I code on a Laptop far weaker than that :P

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/y-series/y50/

It's not bad, but this is better overall for around the same price. I don't know if you are still a student (I doubt it), but Lenovo also offers student-discounts, if you know someone who is.

Sorry to quote my own post, but you can also get a UHD Lenovo laptop for just $299 more than the laptop you linked, with a 860m to boot (which is a lot better than the 740 in yours).

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/y-series/y50-uhd/?sb=:000001C9:0001225C:

You can do much better for that price. I got a system with dual 750m's for about $100 less. With the single 750m it runs games alright, but I would say modern games run well at 1080p 60fps medium graphics. Not sure about the 740 though.