I like my thinkpad. The unfortunate thing about it though is that it's twice the price of other used laptop for comparable specs.

Although, I've more than made up for that money in time saved in tech maintenace issues. (With IBM r&r software, I can reinstall an image of a working OS with my customizations and programs installed with less than half an hours worth of time)

Does any other laptop company out there have a 'system update' program that's just as good as IBM/Lenovo's?

For laptops in the Pentium M 1.7 category, IBMs go for $150-200, while the same Compaq will go for $85.

I have to get alot of cheap laptops as 'green' workstations, and I need to work out the difference in time vs money when I have to reinstall an OS.

With IBM System Update, once the OS is installed, I only have to install the wireless card driver. Once that driver is installed, I run system update and all the drivers for the laptop are loaded and updated. Simple, and easy. If the factory partition is still intact? Wow, even simpler.....

The worst laptop I would have to say so far? Acer. Really difficult to find the drivers needed and a lot of hair pulling.

Any idea with HP/Compaq?

I'm not a huge fan of the over done aesthetics of HP notebooks (especially all the high gloss elcheapo plastics) but I think they do make a fairly decent computer and provide excellent service. I had an HP tablet that the display went bad on. They didn't ask too many questions and sent a UPS box out. Fixed in under a week. Still working today (3 years now).

Their website is pretty good too for grabbing drivers. They don't have a tool like System Update (at least the last time I got drivers they didn't have anything).

I guess I forgot to mention that I was going to buy in very used category.

I think that restricts me to thinkpads in a very strict way.

Parts and supplies are abundant for any model you would ever wish for when it comes to displays, hinges, power sources, etc, etc.

With other brands, they change the models and plastics so often, that the parts are difficult to come by.

Also, with thinkpads, there are tons of youtube videos of this and that to show you how to repair/take apart anything.

I guess the time saved is worth the extra expense.

Hit the nail on the head IMO. I have lost interest/faith in most other brands now that I'm using ThinkPads. I have a T60 and it's the best all around notebook I have found. I just need the higher resolution monitor and it would be truly a desktop replacement

There are several other quality notebook brands and/or lineups available, and each of them appeals to a different target market...

With no intention of starting an OS war, I'll state that MacBooks are machines worth every respect. I don't own any of them and refuse to work on Macs in general, but that's just my personal choice...call it being spoiled by a decade of messing around with ThinkPads....

Panasonic ToughBooks are almost impossible to fault when used in the environment that they were designed for. No other laptop would survive what these babies do. And yes, the pricetag is a difficult one to swallow. Let's Note models ( or "light" ToughBooks as some of them are known on this continent) are in a class of their own, and while an absolute horror to work on, they are a joy to use and retain the exceptional build quality that has been Panasonic's standard for the past six-seven years at least.

Newer HP EliteBooks with IPS screens...yummy. Can't justify buying one anytime soon, though.

Alienware - all the bright lights and the outlandish design notwithstanding - are very well-built units, at least the ones I've encountered.

All of that said, I still own numerous ThinkPads and enjoy them tremendously. I wouldn't say "no" to a Panasonic CF-R6 or an IPS-equipped HP EliteBook offered to me with a *deep* discount, though...

HP Elitebook, Dell Latitude (if you can stand the quirky design) and Precision, Panasonic Toughbook (if you don't care about the price) -> Business laptop category

Consumer laptops -> Apple Macbook Pro/Air (but don't run anything CPU and GPU intensive on them), Samsung Series 7 and 9, Possibly the Sony Z series if you need ultra high resolution and gpu performance in a super light package.

Gaming -> Alienware still rules that arena (and i do like their high quality design).

For laptops of that vintage, Thinkpads and the Panasonic Toughbooks were really the only consistently good brands. Beginning with the Core Duo generation, the quality of Dell, HP, Samsung, Apple and others finally started to catch up but I get the impression that you would rather stick with older laptops.

Yes, for my situation, the laptops have to be old enough that if they were stolen, the financial costs would be low. I'm also hoping that a low old system would be a deterrent to theft. I would be running a system that ran on just Office 2000, Dropbox, and Remote Desktop connection locally. In reality, the system would run fine with P3 laptops, but for sanity on the internet I would like to have P4 systems for surfability.

I think a P3 system is still useable for the internet for everything out there except for flash video. That's the only time I ever had issues, although I think that my youtube issues had more to do with buffering between the processor, ram, and the HD.

Now that I think about it, drivers won't be that big of an issue. I always like OWNING a laptop that was 100% patched and in tip top shape, but for a work system, I'm not so nitpicky that way.

One thing I am nitpicky is the keyboard feel, and a normal sized enter key where the " key is right next to enter. I hate these new keyboards with a truncated enter key. You see it on a lot of new laptops these days, Acer and Toshiba are really big culprits. My pinky is not meant to stretch so far.

If I go with thinkpads, it will be t23/t4x/g/r series laptops, hopefully with 15 inch screens, although 14's will be fine. The larger the paperweight, the better.

I've had luck with the Dell Latitude line, and have had three of them so far. The Dell 630 is a sound notebook built around the Core 2 for reasonable money. They hold up well, and components are easy enough to find. You can find them just about everywhere and don't have to spend much either.
In my opinion, they don't respond as well to my typing as my Thinkpads, but nothing else has that I've used enough to comment on.

--phubai

To an untrained eye all ThinkPads look the same. My friend told me that my X220 looks no different to the X31 that i had yonks ago, and i just looked at him funny.

I have an HP Elitebook with an IPS screen. Such a beauty, yet such a beast ! Picked this one up on a local ad site for 225$, best deal of my life

I was just about to reply and say something similar until I read this Post. So, all I can say is that I completely agree. I have a little bit of a side-business refurbishing and repairing computers, mostly for other teachers and their families. Although I do much of my work with ThinkPads, because of all the characteristics that have been cited already and that I believe in them, however a lot of my clientele asks for somethings that's a little less expensive. So referring back to experience from my IT days when I often bought Dell Latitudes when I didn't have the budget for ThinkPads, I found the D620 and D630 to a great fit.

The specs are very decent: with Core Duo or C2D, DDR2 for RAM as well as SATA hard drives making upgrades and replacements far cheaper than the older D600/610. They sold in such great numbers, that they are very easy to find as well as cheap to buy. I've often been able to get them in the $150 range. The main thing to watch out for is to be certain you get the original Dell A/C adapter, or you'll get an error message and the expense of having to replace generic that many eBay sellers try to include. It's also worthwhile to keep an eye on the "E" series as well, since they are reaching that magic 2-3 year "end of lease" term time-frame.

But, definitely stay in the "professional" lines of whoever you go with, since the service is completely different. Although, not as nice as IBM/Lenovo support, the Dell service has been fine. I'd rate it a little above HP, and FAR above others that I've dealt with such as Acer, Gateway and Toshiba.