conti has better touring tires than the town and country in the original post.

conti has a few 'layups' of tires and the T&C's have a rudimentary but fairly effective plastic ply barrier also seen in their lower end 700C tires. Many manufacturers use a version of the plastic 'flatbreaker' in their tires.

The Travel Contact has a rubber safety barrier and kevlar sidewall protection that is more in line with the Schwalbe Marathons. They are also introducing a Vectran flatbreaker in their 2008 top of the line touring tires. This is an expensive fabric but produces very supple and responsive tires. Schwalbe has also gone to Vectran flatbreakers in their 'supreme' tire.

The Conti Security and the Marathon Plus tires use a very thick and heavy rubber flat breaker and will tend to ride like bricks.

conventional wisdom is the Conti rubber wears faster than the Schwalbes but tires are disposable so 2000 versus 3000 miles to me isn't a big concern. I've ridden long enough to waste tires after a couple hundred miles on road debris, so longevity of a tire is really a crap shoot IMO.

Conti has switched many of their 2008 tires to a new 'black chili' compound which rides nice, is grippy and lower rolling resistance. I believe Schwalbe has upgraded their tires with a similar rubber technology as well.

I've ridden the Conti Travel Contacts thru miles and miles of very rough roads and find them to be very robust touring tires. They are interesting in ride- at slow speeds the side knobs give a little bit of tread 'squirm', but having pushed the tires up to and over 50MPH down several mountain passes, the handling gets MORE solid as speeds increased over 30. I found it a curious (and reassuring) performance characteristic.