I'm going to sound like a broken record:
Dells will be slightly better build than the Toshibas, and their support is not what it once was, but still miles ahead of Toshiba.
Lenovos are equal or just a bit better than most Dells. Lenovo Thinkpads are better than any of these, they are still the 'standard' in the business world where style takes a back seat to rugged reliability, besides the trackpoint interface gives you a less frustrating option in a world now filled with annoying twitchy Synaptics trackpads.
The trackpoint is a small red nub in the middle of the keyboard to control the cursor, Once upon a time many Dells and Toshibas offered a varation of this interface, now it's mostly only left on Thinkpads, and Synaptics is a company that makes the trackpads used by pretty much every laptop maker...btw understand, the trackpoint is in addition to your standard trackpad. These days many are complaining about the trackpads on EVERY brand.
The best way to buy a Thinkpad is via the Lenovo Outlet where all their offerings, irrespective of called new, refurb or scratch & dent arrive looking brand new, include new software and have a full 1 year warranty. The problem is the Lenovo Outlet site is totally screwed up this weekend, most of the time it fails to load any listings, and we can expect it will not get repaired til after the weekend... You were already in the Luddite thread, check the recent postings there including the one regarding the laptop I bought last week, it's in the ballpark for what you want and cost me all of $414...I added an extra 4 Gig ram that cost me another $37 at Newegg and took a whole 3 mins to install.