I make my living with my laptop and I've used both. I prefer the MBP but I'm a Windows programmer so YMMV. Yes, they are expensive but they seem to last a litt

I make my living with my laptop and I've used both. I prefer the MBP but I'm a Windows programmer so YMMV. Yes, they are expensive but they seem to last a little longer than the Thinkpads. I think the Thinkpads used to be a professional class machine but I think they are coasting on their old reputation now. We had several fail (screens mostly) in a 3 person shop where I worked. At some point, the cost of the hardware pales in comparison to the downtime you would experience if your machine failed. I haven't had any problems with my (less than 2 years old) MBP Retina but I had a few things fail over the 7 years I had the previous MBP. I had a video board fail and I took it down to the Apple store and got it fixed in a day or two. I replaced the hard drives and fans myself as it got older. Another thing in favor of the MBP in customer facing situations is the screen. For demonstrating GUI's and graphics the MBP screen just looks good - though it was a lot better when they had 17" screens.