You should try to combine the laptop and photo gear into a single bag, one large enough to carry it all and a few personal items, but small enough to fit in the overheads of the planes you will be flying.

A large photographic backpack would do the trick; there are many out there with laptop compartments.

Failing that, a large rolling briefcase with laptop compartment would suffice, but you'd have to come up with padding and liners for your photo gear since a rolling briefcase has no photo-specific compartments.

In my case, I built my own bag. I used an inexpensive American Tourister rollaway from Walmart as the base; it has an integrated laptop compartment on the side. I bought a slab of 4" furniture-grade foam, cut custom compartments into it for all of my photo gear, and cut it to the same size as the main compartment of the rollaway. It now fills the entire bag, protects all of my camera and laptop gear, and most importantly, doesn't scream, "I'm full of expensive stuff! Steal me!" In fact, it pretty much screams, "I'm a crappy, cheap, Walmart bag full of nothing that anyone with any taste or self-respect would EVER want to steal!"