They are all Intel Reference platforms: only your budget will determine the model (if you get your money through work, then you'll go for the best "bang for the buck").
That said, there are 4-5 (tops) companies in the WORLD making notebooks: all the choice you see in the shops are about branding and artificial product differentiation. ECS, Acer, Asus etc. fall off the same machines as Apple, Fujitsu, HPQ etc. (Lenovo being a notable exception). They contain the same CPU, same RAM ...same MS licence etc. Some even have almost the same shell (e.g. ECS-DELL-FSC-Toshiba).
If you use it for work, I suggest you get the cheapest one that offers you enough value to perform your task (e.g. 15.4", 17" being no longer portable; x3100, 2Gig are all sufficient for coding: if you need real power, you'll ssh anyway to the given HPC). You will not get a heart-attack if it drops, gets scratched or stolen: you will just get a brand new one, being 2x better for approx. the same price within a year with strong batteries (they will fade within 2 years anyway).
If it is (also) for showing feathers, then obviously Apple, Sony (and no, Lenovo is no good for attracting attention).
But then again, these are PC-s, and the P stands for Personal: tastes and habits vary. On a pure technical level, whichever runs Linux/BSD best (generally the least fancy ones) already gives enough empowerment to change the world...
That said, there are 4-5 (tops) companies in the WORLD making notebooks: all the choice you see in the shops are about branding and artificial product differentiation. ECS, Acer, Asus etc. fall off the same machines as Apple, Fujitsu, HPQ etc. (Lenovo being a notable exception). They contain the same CPU, same RAM ...same MS licence etc. Some even have almost the same shell (e.g. ECS-DELL-FSC-Toshiba).
If you use it for work, I suggest you get the cheapest one that offers you enough value to perform your task (e.g. 15.4", 17" being no longer portable; x3100, 2Gig are all sufficient for coding: if you need real power, you'll ssh anyway to the given HPC). You will not get a heart-attack if it drops, gets scratched or stolen: you will just get a brand new one, being 2x better for approx. the same price within a year with strong batteries (they will fade within 2 years anyway).
If it is (also) for showing feathers, then obviously Apple, Sony (and no, Lenovo is no good for attracting attention).
But then again, these are PC-s, and the P stands for Personal: tastes and habits vary. On a pure technical level, whichever runs Linux/BSD best (generally the least fancy ones) already gives enough empowerment to change the world...