Astroman,
I'm using an IBM T42 TP. 40gig 2 USB ports, 2 pcmcia slots, built in wireless, 512mb ram, built in modem, PS2 mouse port, no serial port, but you can get an USB adapter. 1.7Hgz Pentium Centrino, CDRW, DVd player etc. Its abt 12-16months old now.
Its been superseded now with the T43 or maybe even a newer model.
I've worked on all models of IBM thinkpads for several yrs and imho they stack up as pretty good workhorse machines. Prior to that I've had an R32, I series, 380X, 760XL. All worked fine without any problems. Outside the 390 series (1999-2000), all have been pretty reliable machines. Mine gets a good workout for abt 10hrs+ day, it gets picked up, moved, bumped, unplugged,put into standby mode in and out shaken, (T series have anti shock on the hardrives where the arm parks itself in microseconds to save any harddrive damage).
I can't speak of other brands and I might be biased to IBM machines, but any well built notebook should be able to take a hammering. It might be comforting to know that hardware has gone a long way in terms of reliability. Back in the days on W95, NT4, it was a right pain the A** with finding/installing drivers. But with XP (even with its own misgivings) its easy to get things working quickly.
Cheers
