laptop recommendations

[Kalyan Vaidyanathan]

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.

Am not particularly picky about OS.

Should you need, I'll be developing in Java/Swing with JBoss and MySql.

thanks in advance for your responses,
regards,
-kalyan