Why ThinkPads are so great...
ThinkPads are so great because of the build quality. Their keyboards are known to be the most comfortable laptop keyboards ever made. The outside of the screen is made of a tough rubberized plastic that doesn't easily scratch. The bottom part of the laptop is made of a magnesium frame encased by hard black plastic that is also very scratch resistant. The X201s's are made of mostly magnesium and carbon fiber to make them even stronger and lighter. Overall the materials and quality give it a feel like no other laptop I've ever felt, including other business class laptops. Looks-wise, some people like the simplistic black rectangle, others find it really boring and dull. I think it is quite sexy. You can keep your illuminating apple light.
Even with the impressive build quality, the T510 remains a relatively light and thin laptop. It is noticeably smaller and quite a bit lighter than my old ASUS C90S 15.6 inch laptop. Along with the quality, mine also gets great battery life. Even with using programs like photoshop and dreamweaver, wifi enabled, and the screen brightness almost maxed, I can get over 7 hours of battery life with the 9 cell battery. I would imagine if you turned off wifi and kept the backlight at a reasonable level, you could get around 8-10 hours. It also runs quite cool. Most of the time, even the hottest parts of the laptop aren't even what I would consider warm to the touch. The warmest part is where your hands are resting, not because of the computer being warm, but because of your hands being warm!
Performance-wise my T510 is very similar to my quad core gaming rig. As said before the adobe suite, visual studio, and ms office all perform just as well as they do on my rig. Windows 7 Professional 64 bit is very snappy, even with integrated graphics. The boot times seem to have shortened significantly since I defragmented. I am astonished such performance is possible with a laptop. They have come such a long way since the 90's. I would recommend getting the Intel i5 540M in whatever laptop you get.
Of course it doesn't come free. Much like apple, there is a premium you pay for ThinkPads, but it isn't as much as what you would pay for a Macbook Pro. In fact it is a good deal less if you can buy one when there are significant sales going on or you have a student discount. Not too long ago they had a 15% off coupon for St. Patricks Day. I got a pretty decent student discount on mine.
If you can afford the extra money for the ThinkPad over the HP, ASUS, or Toshiba, you will NOT regret it. The quality is in a completely different league. I am incredibly happy with mine. Every time I use it, the quality impresses me. You really get a sense of confidence when typing away on the keyboard and using the touchpoint.
If you've got any more questions about a specific model or what kind you might want, feel free to send a PM my way.
