I've been favouring Toshiba's since I'd gotten my first (Satellite A15-S157). Only gripe I have about them is they aren't all that durable in some areas.
1) Poor cooling which causes troubles. Hard disk goes dead due to heat in a short time. If you use it for long periods (24+ hours continuous use) the heat eventually gets to the hard drive even with a cooling mat. Gone through 2 manufacturer hard disks already over a few years which failed due to excessive heat. Hard disk sits less than 1/4" from the heatpipe so... it warms up fast when pushing it.
2) Display hinges are fragile. After 6 months they completely broke apart. Seems they were made from a very soft aluminum (or lead?). Ended up having to put a wedge between the screen bottom and laptop frame under it to keep it up now. Also fastened the hinges down in place with a couple zip-ties under the speaker covering.
3) CD/DVD drive has heavy difficulty reading. Worked fine for a few months but it now fails to read even brand new disks without slamming the eye up against the edge to the end of the rail when scanning and rescanning the disk trying to read it. Seems to have trouble toward the outside 80% of the disk. Doesn't have too much trouble reading the inside (mini-discs don't have too much trouble here).
4) Tend to end up with a completely dead pixel here and there. Returned two before due to coming out of the box with dead pixels on the screen.
5) From longterm use, the CPU fan goes bad (makes noice and vibrates alot) and so requires a drop of oil in the spidle to get back to functioning order. This isn't toshiba specific though as I have the same problem with my desktop power supply fans frequently.
Aside from these, it's held up well for several years. Has a comfortable keyboard layout, and runs quite well. Unlike many other brands (dell for example) the touchpad doesn't 'wear down'. Another family members' dell laptop, the touchpad coating literally softened up and came off in the centre.
Having been around the motherboard a few gazilion times over the years so to speak, I have found the Gateway laptops to be fabulous...Gateway produces a snazzy laptop with tons of amenities save one- ever since Gateway merged with Acer, their customer service has gone to the dogs. Having said that, I will tell you that it has been rare indeed for me to have to send a Gateway back for warranty repairs and that alone says a ton. I work as an IT admin for a public school district and I can promise you that my laptops have been put through various forms of torture doled out by students and teachers...I have five different models of Gateway laptops ranging in age as far back as 5 years and ALL of them take a licking and keep on ticking!
I would normally recommend HP, because I think you can get a good value out of them. However, I do like Sony Vaio for the styling and build quality (my last HP (zd8000) wasn't the great on build quality IMHO) - though, unless you can get a deal, I think you're paying a lot for the brand name.
I managed to purchase the Sony laptop I currently use (13" core2duo) at a great Sale time: Vista's release. B3st Buy was trying to get rid of everything (winxp) in stock before the Vista-equipped stock came in. I managed to purchase what would normally be a $1500 machine, on their shelf, for $950. That was enough under my budget, I picked up a 3yr warranty with it. I basically came away with a great deal that I wouldn't normally get. Suffice to say that this purchase was the exception and I would normally be turned away by Sony's somewhat inflated cost.
I am a school district IT Director. I have used Gateway, Apple, IBM, Toshiba, Acer, Dell, and HP/Compaq laptops over the years. My favorite by far is the Acer TravelMate that I recently purchased. The second is the Toshiba. Last place it tied with Dell and Apple.
ASUS all the way, Cheap and they got power comparable to a desktop machine. $999.99 will get you 512mb of video card memory, dual core 2.00, 2 gig of ram, and so on.
It all comes down to how much you want to spend on this laptop. I've worked with many laptops and my suggestion is if your looking for a laptop under $1,000 then I suggest getting an HP laptop. If you want to spend over $1,000 I suggest a Dell XPS.
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