After I started using business grade laptops(Dell Latitude or Lenovo Thinkpad), I feel I will never go back to none business grade laptops. Here are the few things that I notice are much better.
* Wireless receiption is better than cheaper ones. My friend bought a cheap laptop for his parents(Compaq). The wireless connection always got disconnected due to the weak signal. His old Thinkpad T61 never had the problem.
* Keyboard is much more comfortable to type.
* LCD is better. From viewing angle, brightness to constrast ratio. Business grade usually always better than cheap ones.
Overall, I would say business ones are MUCH MUCH more solid. I often see people having problems with their Dell Inspiron after a couple of years. Dell Latitude never gave me the problem. Actually, one exception, I got D630 which has Nvidia GPU. The GPU had well known problem after 2-3 years. I got motherboard replacement from Dell for free. Dell Latitude by default has 3 years warranty.
The price for the business grade is just a couple of hundred dollar more expensive if you can find a good deal. I remember last week Thinkpad T420 was around $600 with the latest Sandy Bridge CPU, which should be really good to do video encode/decoding. Check some of the review about Sandy Bridge CPU. You know how good it is. Dell also often has 15-20% coupon for the refurbished Latitude from its outlet(many still have close to 3 year warranty). I like the dell ones because its driver support is quite convenient or I am just used to its driver download page.
