Lenovo is cheap and entirely okay, Asus is not cheap but good, Dell and Toshiba are somewhere in between. I'm buying a laptop myself before spring, hopefully, for when I work nights and to bring my writing with me when I travel.

I'd go for a Toshiba or Dell, I think.

This. A classmate of mine has an HP laptop that heated like hell, reaching 70 C (158 F) CPU temperature while idle. 

Asus and Toshiba are usually reliable. I have one Toshiba Pentium 4 laptop that is lasting already 10 years and still working.

Never get HP, my old one reached 75 C while idle, and near a 100 when *trying* to play tf2 on it.

Depending on what you are going for. Business, gaming or Ultrabook. Though Asus has great choices in all 3 categories, especially the latter.

From personal use the vaio flip is a great laptop and can be converted into a note taking style tablet. I have a duo 13 and everyone that I had let use it fell in love with it. Also the flip 14 is a very nice machine for its price. Otherwise a lenovo yoga 2 is also a nice choice. Or an asus transformer book duet all wonderful machines in their own right.

If money isn't an issue, I'd go for a 15 inch MacBook Pro with a Windows partition for gaming goodness.

Only made good experiences with Toshiba. I guess their laptops are usually build like tanks. (Like my Satellite A200-106) Working perfectly for almost 8 years now and still looking slick.

i love my yoga pro 2! check it out!

Get an SSD!

Whats your budget? I highly recommend Asus, I have had this laptop for 4 years and it hasn't failed me yet! Also their tech services is epic (I never had to wait for than 2 minutes to talk to someone) and a few of them have free accidental damage warranty! I highly suggest you check them out!

Also their build feels super premium!!!