I have personally used 4 different laptop brands - Dell, Compaq, HP and Fujitsu. I have to say that Fujitsu is 100 times better than any of these other brands.

The biggest thing for a Laptop is reliability and Fujitsu, accordingly to PC World, makes the most reliable laptops there are. Dell is usually the worst. In addition to this you want to see what kind of tech support a company offers - Fujitsu offers free lifetime 24/7 customer support.

One might wonder why these machines are way more reliable than all others. The biggest reason is that Fujitsu still makes its own notebooks in Japan. All the rest of the manufacturers are having them made in China - there is still a big difference between China and Japan.

I also think that the Fujitsu laptops looks pretty good - not as ugly as the IBM.

Unfortunately Fujitsu has not done a great brand building job in the US. In Asia, Europe and Japan they are the top selling brand.