I've had a few non-Thinkpads, non-MBPs: Dell, HP, Toshiba, that i purchased from Costco. And i had problems with power supplies and hard drives, but I always got replacement parts within 2 business days by FedEx at $0.00 cost (prepaid shipping labels for defective drives).
Since i always carry an external keyboard (Matias or Apple, usually) and prop the screen up ata decent height, I can't speak to the ergonomic horrors that many laptops are, but the Dells (Latitutdes, if i remember correctly) weren't bad and didn't have any Ubuntu dual boot show-stoppers (like the recent HP's with the wireless card that's a linux compatibility horror)
So for pre-UEFI dual boots, the Toshibas and Dells were adequate. I won't be buying any more HPs, and I'll probably go to centOS or straight Debian.
Since i always carry an external keyboard (Matias or Apple, usually) and prop the screen up ata decent height, I can't speak to the ergonomic horrors that many laptops are, but the Dells (Latitutdes, if i remember correctly) weren't bad and didn't have any Ubuntu dual boot show-stoppers (like the recent HP's with the wireless card that's a linux compatibility horror)
So for pre-UEFI dual boots, the Toshibas and Dells were adequate. I won't be buying any more HPs, and I'll probably go to centOS or straight Debian.