[epbrown]

I'd take a look at the Lenovo Ideapad line. Lenovo makes the ThinkPad, having taken over from IBM years ago, and the build quality has trickled down to their lower-priced Ideapad line; the laptops don't have all of the cutting edge tech or features of the ThinkPad, but the build quality is still on par.

For similar reasons, I'd also consider a Toshiba Satellite.

The HP Pavilion, all Compaqs, and the larger Asus models all strike me as cheap and fragile. I had an Asus K-series and the battery was dead within a year, the DVD drive was iffy soon after, and it died about 2 years after purchase. It spent it's life inside my place, usually on a couch or table, never dropped or spilled on.