The ThinkPads are designed very differently from their consumer counterparts. At least the ThinkPad T series (and likely the W series) is designed to survive a 35 mph impact and still operate long enough to retrieve vital information off the hard drive. Other tests (usually done at electronic Expos when intro'ing new products) are less dramatic like dropping the a T series from the height of and average desk on to a hard floor and dropping from a 9 foot ladder onto a carpeted floor. No visual damage and they still functioned fine.
The main gripe about the T series generally comes from people who have been using older generation T series laptops. Lenovo made a lot of changes in the current generation and that did not sit well with a lot of "traditionalists".
If you go to Lenovo's site and look at the average review of the T series laptop you will likely see an average 2.5 star rating. On the other hand if you look at the reviews for the L series you will see about a 4 star rating. The L and T series basically uses the same kind of keyboard and mousepad which "traditionalist" have griped about.
An alternative would probably be the Dell Latitude series which is Dell's business laptops. I bought a refurbished 15.6" Dell Latitude 3540 back in Jan for around $500; a new one would have cost about $900 with the exact same specs at that time. It feels pretty solid and I have no complaints about it though I wished it had a backlit keyboard.
The current Latitude 15 3000 (aka 3540) series starts at $590 to $840 before options; see link below. The $779 and $840 models have the same specs so perhaps the difference is a touch screen. They don't offer much upgrade options like Lenovo. You can choose a different CPU, it seems you can't even choose 8GB instead of 4GB; you must install the additional RAM yourself. It comes with the AMD Venus Pro 2GB GDDR5 graphic chip which is basically a Radeon HD 8850m and is pretty decent for games roughly equivalent to a nVidia GT 750m if that means anything to you.
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/latitude-3540-laptop/pd
You can buy the $780 model for $701 using the following link:
http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/dell-latitude-15-laptop/46668.aspx