My girlfriend just bought a Dell laptop recommended by her law school... It works fine, but I am not impressed by it. I say stick with IBM if you have the $$, otherwise there are other options like Toshiba and such that are reputable... I have an HP laptop and it is amazing, altough more of a desktop replacement/multimedia laptop than your typical portable smaller laptop...
The Dell works fine for her needs for law school, so I don't have anything bad to say about it... Good deal as far as $ goes, but don't expect to play high end games on it or anything...