I'm lucky enough to have never dropped a laptop. And my one encounter with spilled coffee resulted in no casualties. These are real world risks faced by everyone with a laptop and to a lesser degree everyone with a computer. Recognizing this risk and a number of high risk situations where people might need a computer, like construction sites and rain forests for example, Panasonic designed the Toughbook. It's sealed against liquid and there are a number of rubber bumpers to cushion the blow. The most recent iteration of this concept is a convertible tablet PC. Surprisingly it only weighs about 5 pounds. Durability doesn't come cheap. The tablet PC version demoed in my video starts at $3000. Of course, replacing a laptop in extreme situations adds up quick, making it smarter to buy the right laptop the first time rather than trying to perform damage control after it's too late.
You'll have to pardon the video quality, I shot it with a Sony DSC-T5 digital still camera during the CTIA ShowStoppers event. Next time I'm bringing my DV cam.
