I lug around a Compaq 3160 - it's about 1.5 years old, now. The Pros: It's fast and powerful, big screen, has good features and a large drive, and the speakers actually sound good. The best pro: it's durable as hell. It has taken a brutal fall from a moving vehicle onto a concrete parking lot (in a small, lightly padded case) and it survived fine.
The Cons: battery life is marginal, and it weighs a TON. The weight is the only reason that I would hesitate to recommend it to a traveller. Other than that, it has been super.