Originally Posted by
CanuckFlyer
I'm on my second Panasonic Toughbook. It's got a VERY long battery life (advertised as 7 hours, but depends on what you use it for obviously), it has an integrated DVD drive (not peripheral), and it weighs only 3 lbs. I take it everywhere. It's called a Toughbook because if you drop it, it still works. (So far I've tested that up to 30 inches.)
I have an old (OLD!) Toughbook that I'm refurbishing to be my new travel computer. It is, in a word, FANTASTIC. It's rugged enough to survive anything air travel can throw at it, but what really sold me on it was the touch screen and GPRS modem (which I hope to test out soonish). That said, for general travel it's overkill, especially on the bank account. Even used, they're more than you'd expect to pay for another laptop. But they are fun (and even more fun to open up and hardware-hack)!
I've had some good experiences with Toshiba laptops, but for the battery life.