Sketching also helps too! I sketch a lot, but I don't really do the scanning part. The pen tool is a hard tool to use for me, but it's vitally important, right? I was taught to always use the pen tool instead of other tools, because that would consider cheating. lol
It's not a macbook. It's a crappy good-working Dell computer. I installed XP, Ubuntu (gotta have ubuntu on my system. :P) and Windows 7. Then, I installed Office 07 on two of the OSs. and installed Office 03 on my laptop, so I can work on the two computers at the same time. Pretty neat, huh.