Before they became Lenovo, I thought that IBM's ThinkPads were the best laptops someone else's money could buy!
I have no experience with them post-Lenovo.
Also in the corporate arena, I generally found Compaq / HP had taken over Toshiba's mantle as laptop of choice, certainly from 2000 to 2007 or so.
Now I'm not so sure.
Spending my own money on a laptop I'd look first at Acer and Dell, then Toshiba.
SD