Mining can be profitable, if you like to take a risk and spend some money. For about $400 you would get a nice graphic card that would help you out getting started. Then you should mine new coins on there very first moment. So you would end up with many different coins. And then you just wait if it will be ever profitable to sell them (maybe wait month or years).
This advice is only good for you if you are willing to stay calm for a longer period of time; thus not selling coins to quickly (longterm investment).
On the other side you might consider buying some coins that are on a low price right now.
Your laptop cannot help you as mentioned already.
Anyway this is only my point of view. No guarantee that this will work of course.
Good luck either way!
scrypt coins are dying fast. and there are so many people that will point their cards to the ones that will not fail that 1 card will be nothing. scrypt has no future. to add to my argument we are already waiting for scrypt asic miners...
The future is only sha256 or strict CPU. Just right now you can make money from scrypt but wont last much...