I picked up an ASUS 900HA a couple weeks ago to replace my old Dell Latitude C400. I have to carry my work laptop back and forth but can't do anything with it, load software, plug in a usb drive, etc so I needed something that could easily go with me. The 160G drive was a little small so I swapped in a 500G and now have some free space again.
If you don't install a lot of software or need to take a drive with you look at just getting a usb enclosure and stick whatever drive in you want. I've had aboue three different cd/dvd burners in one over the years and have used it in multiple laptops and even a customer's server one time.
I couldn't find any but the windows models so I just bought one and installed my Linux myself and left a few G for windows and setup a dual boot as I can't get Garmin Basecamp running under wine and its a little slow under virtualbox.