Laptops, due to their emphasis on compactness, lose a lot in the area of ergonomics. One of the problems, CNET news article Is Your Laptop a Pain in the Neck says, is that people are using them as full time replacements for their computers. The keyboards aren’t as easy on the fingers as today’s ergonomic keyboards. The mice–what mice?–are often awkward touchpads or those annoying eraser-like buttons. The screens themselves are usually too low, so people hunch over them which can lead to neck and back problems (on top of the hand and wrist problems from typing and mousing).
The article goes on to mention a bunch of statistics about workers missing work due to RSIs. The problem is probably not so much in the laptops themselves but in the way we use them. If you’../../../2005/01/igesture_review.html”>iGesture) and keyboard to go with it (I like the Kinesis Contoured best, but the Fingerworks TouchStream Keyboard is very compact if that’s more important). Also, look into a laptop stand that will raise the height of the screen so you’re not hunching.