I've been a Thinkpad fan for about a decade now. I bought a W500 to replace a stolen T60p a couple years ago. Aside from having a better GPU, it was not an upgr

I've been a Thinkpad fan for about a decade now. I bought a W500 to replace a stolen T60p a couple years ago. Aside from having a better GPU, it was not an upgrade. * There's less metal in the frame, I assume to make it lighter. It also makes it less sturdy. * The screen is 150px shorter, but only 80px wider. Net loss. * The screen is much lower quality: TN vs IPS, lots of light leakage from the backlight, poor contrast. * The keyboard is worse; it flexes more. * The plastics aren't as durable. * The audio ports are on the front. That means no sitting in a semi-reclined position with headphones plugged in. It's enough to make me wonder if the people who designed the thing have ever used a laptop away from a desk. After about 18 months, I started having problems. First the keyboard died. Then the hinges started getting loose, and eventually broke entirely. The plastics cracked in several places. The internal screen stopped displaying video (not just the backlight - there's nothing). My girlfriend has a T400 and also had problems with plastics cracking. Now I have another T60p, but with a T61p motherboard in it so I can have 8gb of RAM. It's the best laptop I've ever used.