Seriously! I'm very surprised Thinkpads (outside of the x1) were not mentioned at all. This blows my mind!
Yep, for under 2K that w540 would be awesome. I had the previous version and it was probably my favorite laptop ever, ran linux like a champ.
I'm on a w530 and I want to be buried with it. Debian runs flawlessly with it.
x220 here. The only bad thing I'll say about it is the out of the box wireless was crap. I caused myself endless problems by not selecting the $5 Intel 6205 upgrade.
Battery life is only 4-5 hours (Windows squeezes out 6-8), but I can live with it.