Ughh... Tough times... Seems like right now there aren't any usable notebooks on the market. I have two of the "dream" machines you have mentioned: Thinkpad T61 and prev. generation Macbook Pro. Both are junk: Lenovo uses one of those el-cheapo dim and terrible colored screens and MBP also uses a 6-bit LCD albeit with LED backlight. My MBP also runs OSX, which blows ass compared to superior Ubuntu/Gnome on a Thinkpad. Please don't moan: I've learned to be VERY productive in Gnome+Compiz and while I like Macs, I highly recommend you guys check those out.

Back to the hardware: I keep jumping between the two. I wish I could just run Ubuntu on a Mac, but I absolutely need Adobe software for work: our designers as well as business people use Fireworks and Photoshop all the time, so I gotta be able to read and modify those files, so I'm trying to bear with OSX/Finder... Ughh.

I am also a photography nut and the situation with laptop LCDs is grim right now: the total degradation compared to what we've had 2-3 years ago. I don't know a single laptop manufacturer who offers 16.7 million colors on a laptop LCD... So if you pay any attention to LCD quality, I don't think you'll be happy with anything.

But it's either Thinkpads or Macs, as always. There aren't anything else out there. DELL makes the nice Latitude series, but as always, they couldn't resist the urge of saving a few dollars and opted for the cheapest touchpad possible, rendering the machine useless: that ALPS junk just doesn't work.