Interesting article on quality of laptops basically says

Not with Toshiba, my friend; see my other post here. If you are starting out, anything will go, but make some qualified judgements before it does.

.... I had four Toshibas over six years and three failed to last eighteen months.

I bought two ASUS EEE PC's twelve months ago and both have been trouble free; a fifteen month old Apple Macbook Pro has had two minor, non critical, problems.

Well, just looking at the Morgan Computers (UK only; sorry, you US guys but this is a Londoner's take) shows that Toshiba are the most re-worked/packaged/newed of all, which for anyone with probing judgement spells a warning sign. Clearly to be avoided.

How does it square for price between the two, I pray? Pro is arms and legs, simply all you have (not just an arm and a leg, with the rest left over). And frankly, waste of money.

Maybe it is only because of one very good experience, but I would believe that it would be hard to surpass the quality/support/whatever of an IBM/Lenovo laptop.
If cost is a problem, it can be bought second-hand (they are expensive).
I've had mine for a couple of years now, and never had any problems, except for upgrading to a larger hard drive, which took a little patience, and a screwdriver, on my part.
Otherwise (COW) no BSOD or anything else, that was not already taken care of through the additional "secret" IBM partition on the hard drive.

As an IBM stockholder, I guess I should consider them, the very first computer I owned in '92 was an IBM. Guess desktops are a lot different than laptops, but found that my IBM needed priority hardware. I remember paying $500 for 8MB of RAM lol ! when generic was around $140. I looking at a ASUS F50sv A1 & N70sv B1, really not a great deal of difference, chipset is SiS671DX. The N70 lists a sbs of 1033, and none listed for the F50. I don't know what would compare in an IBM...

You are right, that is how it was many years ago when PCs were a novelty, and you virtually only had IBM and Apple to choose between.
For my present R50, I have upgraded the RAM to 2GB, using ordinary, standard modules, bought on EBay, and increased the harddrive to 320GB (The largest available with the older IDE interface) for $110AU. The only problem was that the Acronis transfer software could not cope with the special IBM partition. (I should probably have bought Norton's ghosting package).
I know the IBM Lenovos are a bit more costly than the rest, but it looks as if they still set the target for others to follow, and for my part, I would rather buy a second hand ex government IBM than a flashy new laptop of any other brand, for a similar amount of money.
And...I do not own IBM shares, nor am I employed by them or any associate companies.

IBM sold the business a few years ago. They also gave limited time useage of the Thinkpad name. This article isn't factoring support at all. Most people hope to get a laptop built good enough that they don't need support. The study doesn't consider support after the laptop breaks but the likelyhood that will need support later.

my annual report better! Didn't realize that IBM had sold that part of their business. I had wondered why the name had changed to Lenova.
I am seriously considering the ASUS and will probably purchase from CDW. They built "old faithful" for me, which I am writing from win98 and all. Thanks for all your help. It has been an interesting thread.
From laptops to cars, now that's a leap. Happy Holidays!

with these numbers published on various "portable" pc system manufacturers...

has anyone done a study of car manufacturer post bailout reliability? for example, what are the failure rates on major components in the chevy cobalt in the first year?

I think there needed to be some verified data for comparison in other common markets.

So, until then, i am not giving this article any weight.