[blazing_grey]

I second/third/47th the recommendations for Thinkpads. Everything people say here regarding graphics drivers is true, unfortunately.

You will have problems with pulseaudio hosing video playback timing and a host of other stuff if you run Ubuntu. My solution is to just remove pulseaudio entirely, which forces me to use an alsa-based volume widget, but that's pretty trivial and the hard volume keys work out of the box.

If you get thermal issues, pull the machine apart and make sure the heatsink is applied correctly - on my T400 there was a serial # sticker over one edge of the CPU die that was holding the heatsink away from the die. Also, the cooling air intakes have filters that get dirty easily and make a massive difference to cooling efficiency (the fan isn't just pulling air from inside the case as things appear).

As for keyboards, the keyboard on my T400 is my favorite on any computing device I have right now. The layout on the W520 my employer provided is the same as the T400, which is basically the same as it's been forever, but the keyfeel is a lot more rubber-dome-y than the T400 which feels highly mechanical.

The other thing I'll say for Thinkpads is that after a few years of maintaining my wife's laptops, I was pleasantly surprised on opening up my T400 to clean out it's heatsink that Lenovo's engineers actually didn't hate me and want me to die as is the case with other, fruitier manufacturers. There's still a good bit of "remove WXYZ to get at A", but these are much more maintainable machines than typical.