That's interesting. I've never had a problem with any of my Thinkpad (Hitachi) drives. In fact, my T30, I've dropped twice, while it was running! Damn thing didn't skip a beat or drop a bit.
Of course, individual units from any manufacturer may be fine. I was just relating my overall experience with hundreds of different machines over many years.
I still pick WD for every computer I build. A dead WD hard drive is a very rare thing for me.