ThinkPad build quality is unrivaled. The keyboard is almost as nice as my HHKB. The hinges are rock solid. The keyboard has drainage ducts. Everything is designed to be serviced.
My favorite thing is the removable CD/DVD bay, where you can stick in a hard drive caddy and put different 2.5" drives in there.
Nice for super-fast (internal SATA) backups to multiple drives. 500G of databases, video, etc. Or for installing an alternate O.S. - so if you want to try a BSD or Linux on its own root drive instead of a virtual machine, it's an easy way to swap out drives.
Also because they're so popular, parts are easily replaced. I typed-through the keyboard on my 2-year-old T400S, wearing the matte finish & letters off the keys, and it was only $40 to go to some random shop in Singapore and get them to put a brand new T400S keyboard on it.
Having briefly owned (and subsequently returned a W520), I found the keyboard tolerable at best, and the trackpad was an utter disaster. I hear Lenovo build quality is not what it used to be back around the T61 days.
Most people who regard Lenovo quality as best of the best have never used a Panasonic Toughbook. Oh my God - the keyboard on a CF-53 is the best ever if you're a Vim fan. Also: Gobi-2000, 36" drop rating 6 times, something like 200+ lbs crush rating meaning you can stand/jump on it, you can run water through the keyboard without issue, pick it up by the carry handle and swing it around haphazardly, and has interesting BIOS functions like Concealed Mode, hardware on/off wireless switch, easy swappable hard drive. It is a TANK, and did I mention the haptic feedback on the keyboard is just incredible. Because the feeling doesn't get better than this. You cannot say the same about Lenovo.
That said I just picked up a System76 Bonobo Extreme, because it's such a pain dealing with my CF-53's 1366x768 resolution all the time, and I wanted a future proof workstation that confidently runs Linux. System76 maintains Debian packages to get the little things right. I think you need a higher res setup for long hours, and maybe a lower resolution machine for working on-the-go. If I could do it over again, I'd go with the Bonobo Extreme (17") for my main workstation, complimented with a Toughbook CF-C2 if I wanted lightweight, CF-53 if I could handle the bulk, or CF-19 top of the line w/ GPS if I had an extra $5,000 laying around. Haven't used the Bonobo Extreme yet, but I'm really anxious to see how well Ubuntu does when it gets commercial hardware support and a high performance GPU. At $2500 the BE wasn't cheap, but then again the only other machine I'd look for in that price range is an Apple, and their walled garden approach just kills me. Still I'd probably go with Apple over Lenovo even if I weren't a die hard Linux fan; I can deal with Linux in a VM. Would only deal with Lenovo as last resort.
It's tough alright. http://www.panasonic.com/business-solutions/marketing-materi...
No wonder they managed to fit a really good keyboard into a huge chassis like that.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/12/10/samsung_840_pro_ss...
"The Samsung 840 Pro is a revolutionary SSD in terms of steady state performance, beating out the competition easily in our trace based testing. The low latency and high sequential speeds are among the best we have recorded. The power consumption figures prove that this SSD would be just as much at home in the latest Ultrabook as in an overclocked gaming rig."
I haven't upgraded from 16GB to 32GB yet, but I like having the option!
Now for problems. Hopefuly some of these things were fixed in W530?
* Bezel is huge!
* Larger 170W power supply is very heavy, doesn't work in airplane power outlets. Smallish power cord often pops off.
* Installing Crucial M4 SSD for me has resulted in BSODs (on windows). Dual booted to linux mint 12 and that also corrupted. Google for SSD W520 BSOD. Eventually gave up and went back to stock HDD.