FWIW, had pretty good experiences with the five Thinkpads, private and company boxes, that I was using at one point or another. There are things that could be (a lot) better - battery life on the W530 and, related to that, the ugly, ginormous brick of a charger that it comes with - but, all things considered, I will remain a Thinkpad customer, since I am not aware of better alternatives. The machines work without fail, and survive incidents like a fall from the overhead luggage compartment on a plane.

Crapware doesn't bother me, since that gets wiped before I start using the box, including the biggest offender of all them crapwares - MS Windows. Unless you're concerned about one of those disk-firmware-rewiring NSA uglies, that's a foolproof solution to the nastyware problem.