I've had very good experiences with IBM Thinkpads, and my parents are both extremely happy with their Lenovo Thinkpads. Apparently, build quality hasn't gone down at all after the switch.
If you aren't looking for pure power, however, I'd really recommend an Apple laptop. I've played around with a MacBook Pro and it is a very solid machine (both hardware-wise and software-wise). I haven't had a chance to try out a MacBook, but judging from past iBook experience, they too are very nice little machines. Just my $0.02.