Another vote for Thinkpad. I'll be buying one soon enough - my only wish is that the X series had a touchpad rather than the pointer.
I have a Toshiba A65 that my sister abused for about a year and a half before dropping it and breaking the screen. I took it completely apart and replaced with a screen from eBay and it works wonderfully now (though I did pull out a cylindrical clump of dust 2 inches long, 1cm diameter by the exhaust fan!). I'm selling it soon because it's not as small a computer as I'd like and doesn't have a docking port (carputer potential). I do consider it a good budget computer though. Several of my friends have Toshibas .. some reliable, some not (two actually own a Satellite model that was recalled due to them always breaking).
I loved my Sony Vaio 3 years ago but they've changed styling and pricing since.
I'm perpetually in love with the Mac OS and my 1GHz PowerBook but that doesn't apply here of course.
