There has been some good discussion here on HN about laptops recently, and I'm in the market to purchase a new computer, but I have yet to find anything that satisfies all my wants. Most websites (most) are pretty much impossible to deal with all the options and model numbers and comparison is just a mess(I'm looking at you, Dell and Lenovo), there is no way to sort through the crap out there, unless you know exactly what you want, or unless you want a mac, in which case what you're getting has already been decided.
Maybe you like the Macbook Pro, maybe you're a Asus or Lenovo kinda guy? Maybe you run Linux, maybe windows? Maybe you're on a tight budget, maybe money doesn't matter? Either way, if you had your choice of ONE machine, to do whatever you do on it, which one would it be?
I just want to hear what the crowd here thinks about the current state of laptops, and which way they would go (and why) if purchasing a new one. (for the record, I like MBP's design/aesthetic, which does carry some pull with me, but I really think I want to run Linux. And I dislike the idea of dualboot/VMware, cuz that just goes back to my current problem, of having too many computers, all too slow, and not one perfect one...)
So, I go out of my way to buy the old stuff (T40/T41/T42). These cost about $200 on Craigslist and typically last me 2-3 years.
When it dies -- or more commonly, when I kill it by doing something stupid -- I just pull the hard drive and move on to the next one. It's almost like nothing ever happened.
Macs are pretty nice of course. Carrying around an Air instead of a 6 lb Thinkpad sure sounds like a dream. But from observing folks around me, most of whom use Macs, they also seem to buy a new model every 2-3 years (spending about 10x what I do). And when something fails, or when they need to do a big upgrade, they are often really screwed. (Ie hard drive fails -> send it in -> wait a week -> get it back with everything wiped.)