thinkpad fan here!
lenovo thinkpad model laptops are good too

my personal points for purchasing a laptop include
1. the specifications that i need for the best price
2. brand reputation
3. warranty availability (should be at least 3 years warranty)

at the office we have about 70 ibm/lenovo thinkpad laptops. some are as old as R51 (single cores and only 40gb hdisk!) and relatively newer models like R61 and T61's.

ive noticed that the thinkpad laptops worked fine until they reached 3 years old -- at around this time random problems happened - motherboard, lcd problems.