Thinkpad are generally well regarded in the community, considered to have some of the best keyboards out there (I personally prefer Apple keyboards, especially the MacBook) and are darn near indestructible from what I have read. I am not over the moon about the looks of them, but plenty of people do, and if it ain't broke...
You might want to check out notebookreviews.com see what they say.
Honestly, I really like my MacBook. It has been an absolute tank for the past 14 months, having been tossed, dropped, thrown, flipped, knocked around, slammed, and I type really heavily to boot. It just takes it. I think that one thing I would look for in my next laptop (disregarding that I would only get one with OS X) would be to get one with a sudden motion sensor, or something comparable, and I am pretty sure that Thinkpads have that (though on some I have noticed that it is just advertised as a mounting system). The advantage to teh SMS is that if your laptop is on and running, and it falls, or gets a significant enough bump the hard drive heads lock themselves into position so it doesn't skip across the platters.
Make sure that whatever you choose, you get one that you are comfortable using. Go on down to a store to check out keyboards and trackpads, make sure that you can type comfortably. See if the store has some with matte and some with glossy displays so you can decide for yourself which you would prefer. I personally like the glossy screen, and then only time that it causes me problems is if there is a lamp directly behind me. Definitely check out the trackpad as well. There are plenty of people that hate them, but there are times when you have to use them (I pretty much only use a trackpad on my MacBook) and you want to make sure that you can stand that. I think that part of the reason people don't like trackpads is that too many laptop manufacturer's seem to skimp on that feature, and you can only sometimes find one that is superb. The MacBooks IMO, have said superb trackpads, very large, responsive, easy to move your finger across, and in OS X, and Windows to a certain degree, has excellent drivers that support features that no other OEM does (that I know of) such as 2 finger scrolling and 2 finger secondary clicking.
We can give suggestions but the decision is ultimately yours, and as such you have to make an informed decision.
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