laptop recommendations

[Seth Gordon]

Kalyan Vaidyanathan wrote:
> Hi,
>  I am looking to buy a laptop that can be reasonably used as a dev 
> machine.  I'm thinking atleast 1GB RAM and 80 GB hard disk.  Now questions:
> 1. Any recommended brands that are better and more resilient for dev use 
> and longer lasting battery life
> 2. Any preferences for Intel vs AMD chips.

The sysadmin where I work swears by ThinkPads.