One the one hand, I'm sure you'll be able to run maya with that system. My previous computer was a single core 1.8 GHz Athlon with 1.5GB RAM and a Radeon x1600 card (I think). I could do plenty with Maya. Yes it ran, but there was significant lag in the viewport with too many polys, and it rendered out nice and slow. So I would say, yes, if you really need a new computer, it will run maya, but since you already have a decent laptop, I'll agree with the above comments and advise you to wait a bit until you can get something a bit higher on the scale. Hope that helps.