It is definitely not too late to start.

Have you heard of MOOCs (massive online open courses)? Some of the most popular ones are Coursera, Edx, and Udacity.

There is a Python course on Coursera starting on the 11th of July.

In addition to that, you might want to take the self paced CS50x on Edx for an introduction to many different programming topics. Another very good course is 6.00x on Edx. Both of these courses are very demanding though.

Udacity also have a pretty good CS101 course which uses Python.

When you're taking free online courses, it is very easy to give up if you face something difficult (since you're not being forced to do it like at school). Because of this, I'd recommend setting up a reasonable schedule or timetable that you force yourself to follow, otherwise it is too easy to put off assignments and lectures.

I wouldn't worry about the laptop too much at this stage. For most things, especially Python, you will be fine with Windows for a while. The CS50 course even has a Linux virtual machine that you can use, so your experience will be the same as others' on the course even if your computer is set up differently.

Also, read and understand this. From the thread: "Computer Science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes.".