ciphergoth | Help me buy a laptop! (Reply)

My work now say I should just choose a laptop, they'll check out and approve the purchase, then I should buy it! I don't suppose they'll want to spend a lot of money though - I don't think I can really justify spending over GBP 1000 or so.

So, advice, what should I buy? What features should I be looking for?

Important things:

It'll mostly be a Linux machine. So the built-in Winmodem might be cute, but unless it's a Linmodem it's not much good to me. Ditto XFree86 support for the frame buffer, preferably with an open source (not binary-only) driver.
I have to fly with it a lot. So the sort of laptop that puts the CD-ROM drive and floppy drive as separate accessories sounds tempting; I can just put those in hold luggage, making my hand luggage lighter. Hand luggage is usually limited to 5 kilos; it's annoying when the laptop takes three of those!
Currently my laptop is my main Widnows machine as well as my work Linux machine. I do use Widnows from time to time. However I'm really not that pushed about bundled software, and cute features that only work under Windows are of very marginal interest to me.
I think I'm more pushed about weight, ruggedness and reliability than performance. Battery life is somewhere inbetween.

I look forward to hearing ideas...