I've always heard bad things about Lenovo (though I've never owned one so I could be totally talking out of my ass on this one). I like Toshiba. Well priced and the build quality is good too.
I've got to provide a respectful dissenting opinion here on both counts. Now, these anecdotes are about half a decade old by now, but I suspect they're still valid.
Lenovos, at least the T series, are built like tanks. A friend of mine was laptop shopping a few years ago, and was deciding between a Lenovo and some Dell model of the day (around spring of 2007, if memory serves correct). In one of our mutual classes, there was this guy. Let's call him Dave. Dave came from a rather well-to-do background, and was happily oblivious to many things. Picture a fairly lanky, tall Mitt Romney-type, but without a sinister edge or penchant for effortless condescension. This obliviousness also spread to his eye-hand coordination, meaning that he was quite clumsy. Always late to class, etc etc.
One day, after another friend of ours marveled at all the technical engineering and intricate consonant/number specs the machine was marketed with, Dave was leaving class. His laptop had taken a spill, which had become routine. My friend noticed that it was a Lenovo. Remarking that he had some problems with his Dell, my friend asked Dave about his Lenovo. Dave replied "I don't know shit about computers. But I've had this thing for three years, and it's never broken on me. And I've dropped it a bunch."
Inferring that the Lenovo was built not only to withstand whatever military-grade assault it was designed for, all that mattered was that it survived Dave. And reading subsequent reviews of later models, I don't have any reason to believe the T series is any worse off.
As for Toshiba, I use one at work. A Satellite Sandy/Ivy Pentium machine. It's bloatware central. And if you're looking to take advantage of Intel's new, reportedly competent onboard graphics, you better like the set of drivers it comes with, because you can't update them from Intel's site. If it's stationary, it'll probably get whatever work you need done, but I'd much rather drop cash on another brand.
With that in mind, I can't really give a 100 percent recommendation to any model. One of the horrible things, at least with respect to Dell, is that all of the customization that was available with consumer models isn't there anymore. It's been replaced with pre-built, faster-shipping machines in order to save Dell money. That's their prerogative. But it means that if you want to customize a Dell, you have to buy from their business pages which, and even then you can only customize machines on the higher end.
Another thing is with respect to build quality. I'm typing this on a Dell machine that's six years old and still going. My sister is using my older one, which is seven years old, and only now is giving her hinge problems. At least with respect to Dell, that kind of sturdiness is making it's way from consumer machines to business-class ones.
This is already a lot of text, but there's a bit more to say.
There are boutique manufacturers out there at configure what are called "ODM" laptops, standing for "Original Design Manufacturer." You can find a list of them
here. ODMs are the suppliers, usually based in Taiwan or another place in the American industrial imagination, that sell to to the Dells, Toshibas, HPs and other brand-name manufacturers in the world. Where the boutiques come in is that they buy direct from these guys and put together their own machines. Just run to Google and search any ODM name with the word 'laptop' and you'll get some options. If you're looking to get more performance out of your money, these are good machines. I can't vouch for build quality though.
This is far, far more information than you probably wanted. But once these fingers get going... woah!
