The Business World's Favorite Laptop Has Barely Changed in 30 Years 99
Lenovo's widely used ThinkPad laptop hasn't changed much over the years. Corporate technology leaders say that's why they love it. From a report: "There's a lot to be said for familiarity and that consistent experience," said Ace Hardware Chief Information Officer Rick Williams, whose company uses about 4,000 ThinkPads. The ThinkPad brand of personal computers, originally created by International Business Machines, hit the market in 1992 before Lenovo acquired it, along with IBM's PC division, in 2005. Since then, the boxy design -- originally inspired by the Japanese bento box -- has gotten thinner and lighter, but not much else has changed from a design perspective, Lenovo said.
The logo is the same, although in 2005 Lenovo did add the red dot over the "i" in "Think" that remains today. That logo has remained angled at 37 degrees on the device. And on the keyboard the small, red, old-timey trackpoint remains nestled between the "B," "G" and "H" keys (which Lenovo says some users swear by and some CIOs say they never use). Ports and camera placement have also been relatively consistent. And despite some experimentation with colors, the laptop itself primarily remains its original black. "You're going to recognize the iconic ThinkPad," said Tom Butler, executive director for worldwide commercial portfolio and product management at Hong Kong-based Lenovo.
Its strategy might seem counterintuitive in an industry where winners and losers are often determined based on their pace of innovation, and where to stay the same often means to become obsolete. Big consumer tech companies that dominated the early 2000s, like BlackBerry, Nokia and Motorola, ultimately couldn't keep pace with competitors and struggled. But for Lenovo, which plays in the enterprise space, it's paying off. Lenovo has been leading in market share in the worldwide personal computer vendor market, based on unit shipments, on and off for more than 10 years, according to research firm Gartner.
The logo is the same, although in 2005 Lenovo did add the red dot over the "i" in "Think" that remains today. That logo has remained angled at 37 degrees on the device. And on the keyboard the small, red, old-timey trackpoint remains nestled between the "B," "G" and "H" keys (which Lenovo says some users swear by and some CIOs say they never use). Ports and camera placement have also been relatively consistent. And despite some experimentation with colors, the laptop itself primarily remains its original black. "You're going to recognize the iconic ThinkPad," said Tom Butler, executive director for worldwide commercial portfolio and product management at Hong Kong-based Lenovo.
Its strategy might seem counterintuitive in an industry where winners and losers are often determined based on their pace of innovation, and where to stay the same often means to become obsolete. Big consumer tech companies that dominated the early 2000s, like BlackBerry, Nokia and Motorola, ultimately couldn't keep pace with competitors and struggled. But for Lenovo, which plays in the enterprise space, it's paying off. Lenovo has been leading in market share in the worldwide personal computer vendor market, based on unit shipments, on and off for more than 10 years, according to research firm Gartner.
Is this better than a PowerBook? (Score:1)
I hear Apple is coming out with a PowerPC chip that will slay the 286. Should I hold off?
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How about an IBM laptop with a Power chip that will run AIX? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Is this better than a PowerBook? (Score:1)
If it ain't broke, don't fix it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many companies feel they need to add gimmicks to sell the next version of a successful product. Often those gimmicks ruin what people liked about it. It's not easy to hit on the right consumer formula. If you happen on success, ride it! Tweak gently only.
Don't let your ego tell you that your genius made it successful, a lot is mere luck. If you tinker, you 'll likely fuck it up because you are not the genius you think you are. Good luck got you in, and bad luck is happy to take you back out.
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I thought the 2015 MacBook Pro was the best laptop ever made.
Re: If it ain't broke, don't fix it! (Score:2)
Downhill since the Titanium, imo.
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Re: If it ain't broke, don't fix it! (Score:1)
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If it ain't broke, you’re not profiting enou (Score:3)
FTFY.
As observed auto industry planned obsolescence in designs that feed stealerships main profit center; repair.
Re:If it ain't broke, don't fix it! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think individuals buy Thinkpads for themselves unless they've already used them and swear by them. Mostly they're purchased by IT departments for company staffers to work on. So they're not marketed as a lifestyle or fashion statements. They're marketed as utilitarian tools that won't give the IT department any unpleasant surprises and can stand up to the abuse ham-handed users give them on business trips.
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> Mostly they're purchased by IT departments for company staffers to work on.
God I wish. I purchased a used P50 for myself in 2017 and performance-wise it absolutely whips the 2023 model Dell Precision I was given for work. I'm sure a big part of that is Win10 vs Win11+Corporate bloatw... "security software" but it's still embarrassing how awful the Dell hardware is.
=Smidge=
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And nicely those companies tend to replace them all every three to four years, and those three-to-four-year-old Thinkpads end up going cheap in eBay. I'd take a 4yo refurb Thinkpad over a new consumer laptop costing three times the price.
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I don't think individuals buy Thinkpads for themselves unless they've already used them and swear by them. Mostly they're purchased by IT departments for company staffers to work on. So they're not marketed as a lifestyle or fashion statements. They're marketed as utilitarian tools that won't give the IT department any unpleasant surprises and can stand up to the abuse ham-handed users give them on business trips.
I've worked for a few MOD/DOD suppliers in recent years and Lenovo has been strictly off the list. So it's Dell or HP and I honestly can't stand HP. Not had one that didn't have a problem.
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The keyboard is great, the nipple is useful at times, but CONTROL KEY BELONGS IN THE GOD DAMN CORNER NOT FN
Re: If it ain't broke, don't fix it! (Score:5, Insightful)
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"CONTROL KEY BELONGS IN THE GOD DAMN CORNER NOT FN"
The FN key is in the corner because FN-Backspace used to turn on the down-light. Those keys were in the far corners and you could find them by touch in the dark.
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Control key belongs next to A (on QWERTY, obviously). IBM's PC keyboard design was stupid, nobody needs easy access to Caps Lock.
Re:If it ain't broke, don't fix it! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes. My wife has had three brand new Thinkpads over the years, an x300, a first-generation Yoga with the 12.5" screen, and a new one whose model number escapes me at the moment.
When we buy laptops we typically shop for close to top of the line within the weight class that she's willing to deal with, because we want the computer to last 5+ years. We're a little annoyed with Microsoft, the Yoga worked just fine and has 8GB RAM, but doesn't qualify for Windows 11. We wouldn't have replaced it if the OS situation with the software she needs to run wasn't a concern.
I wish the older non-chicklet keyboards remained normal though.
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You've been unlucky! I've only had one over the years, a W510 and it's still going.
On the other hand I got one for my SO, and work.
I wish the older non-chicklet keyboards remained normal though.
First two thoughts when I tried my SO's laptop, the X1 carbon (gen 4 I think) was "oh, shame, they changed the keyboard" followed by "holy shit this is nicer than mine". I dislike the normal chiclet style, but honestly comparing side by side, the newer Lenovo ones have a really nice key feel.
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There's been a whole bunch of experimental Thinkpads throughout history, including back when IBM still made them. They made slim, light and powerful, they made big and goofy with additional displays, the list goes on. They were the first to really form a relationship with the zero travel mouse, though those have been common on lots of other machines as well of course. But they always consistently provided their solid core lines at the same time.
Because no one was asking, my last Thinkpad was an A21p, which
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Yip, as long as the original concept is still available. The problem happens when the company's "upgrade" changes away what people liked about the original, but they no longer offer an incrementally improved version of the successful original.
One of the most prominent is when Ford started making the Mustang bigger in the late 60's. It's small size was a key
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Yeah, making the Mustang bigger meant it competed with the Charger and Camaro, which were both better cars in that segment. Ford tried a bunch of stupid things with the Mustang over the years. After the originals the one that did really well was the ugliest, the Fox body... because it was small and light.
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Would it have been realistic for Ford to sell a smaller Mustang along with the long model? Then produce more of whatever sells the best.
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I would have to think real hard to figure out if they had a platform which would have been suitable for that already. Otherwise having to create a new platform is a deal breaker. And frankly, I do not want to think that hard about Ford
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"If you tinker, you 'll likely fuck it up"
Except they did fuck it up. Originally, the FN key was in the bottom left and the DEL key was in the upper right so you could turn on the light by touch when you couldn't see the keys because the light wasn't on yet.
Thinkpads were different (better?) a long time ago (Score:3)
I'd also point out that there are other Thinkpad features that have been lost that could be recycled. Butterfly keyboards, PPC/POWER support, eraser point mice (do they still do this? Not sure), super-tiny versions, and the keyboard overhead light. I'm also not sure if the new ones still use a magnesium shell.
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"I loathe trackpads because they take extra real estate "
The keyboard aspect ratio is not the same as the screen aspect ratio. If you make the keyboard as wide as the screen then you still have more than enough vertical space for the trackpad.
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Is the ThinkBook the Anti-MacBook? (Score:3)
I think you could make this case. ThinkPads emphasized consistency over design chops. They started thinner/lighter than their competition, and one could probably argue they hit a sweet spot with the size, if not the weight. And from what I've heard, they tended to be much more reliable than other laptops of the same timeframe/generation. (That's probably more an indictment of poor build quality on the part of Dell, HP, Toshiba, etc, etc, etc. The Toshibas that were the government issue laptops in the '00s rarely lasted the budgeted 3 year life, at least for those who traveled a lot.)
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Comment removed (Score:4)
Re: That I'll vouch for. (Score:2)
You made me think of SME Server, which I used back in ~2007, and became quite fond of. Lovely configuration technique.
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ThinkPads emphasized consistency over design chops.
I don't even think this is the case: the new M1's have a weird blocky look with an unpleasant mix of curve radii. I find them incredibly ugly compare to thinkpads.
But even so, form and function are intertwined. Great design cannot ignore function of functional object. Otherwise why make it even have a screen at all? Apple have often sacrificed a lot of function on the alter of forma as well.
They started thinner/lighter than their competition, and one coul
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My girlfriend has a work issued 14" Latitude from 2023 and it's an awful plastic piece of shite. The times when you could safely say that Latitudes were "proper" machines compared to the rest of the consumer crap are long gone.
To be fair, that's true of Thinkpads as well, what with the L and E series. Lenovo would be well served to go back to a simpler lineup - X, T and P series... one model each. Ultraportable, jack of all trades and workstation.
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Unless they're working in a different US IT Industry than I am, Dell's the once-and-future choice of the enterprise IT department. Accept no substitutes.
I've had a few laptops over the years, by far the worst was an expensive Dell XPS from 2012. It was the fanciest laptop I had owned up until that point, with its shiny metal enclosure. Everything broke on that piece of shit. The cahrging cable, the SD card port, the optical drive, the charging cable... hell, even the shiny plastic trim was brittle and bits kept falling off. Dell is on my "never-buy-again" list. My 2019 Thinkpad seems OK so far, though the internal battery has blown out and needs replacing.
Re: Business favorite . . . you mean Dell? (Score:2)
In China, Dells used to be quite a common sight; perhaps more so than Lenovo.
No longer. I can't remember when I last saw anything by Dell.
I guess the US sanctions have had some collateral damage. The US gov seems determined to remove their products from Chinese shopping lists, even though they complain about the trade imbalance. "You have to buy more of our stuff...No! Not anything you actually want; only stuff you don't want".
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I was issuing Thinkpad's at work when we had a new IT dept head get hired. One of her first big changes was insisting that we switch to Dell laptops because they were cheaper and more bang for your buck. So we switched... 18 months later, most of those Dell laptops were failing with various hardware issues, most had piss poor battery life, and were damaged due to drops. The president came to me and asked why this was happening. I said; "Welcome to the world of Dell laptops! Sure Dell is cheaper, but t
Bought seveal - mainly for portability (Score:2)
Over the years I've bought 3 ThinkPads. My original purchase was made when I was doing a lot of traveling and portability was my top criteria. ThinkPad's 14" chassis came in at the lightest I could find at the time. I quickly fell in love with the "rubber-eraser" pointer. When it came time to replace I bought another one. My only complaint was the internal storage was usually only available with a max of 1TB and I want 2TB.
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Thinkpads don't as far as I know use soldered storage, at least I've not encountered one that does. Swap out the SSD for a 3rd party off the shelf one if you want more space.
I've been on one since 1997 (Score:3)
I can't use a Dell keyboard or anything else. The layout is burned into my brain.
One issue. Since the 2000's every ThinkPad I've had has developed issues with the USB ports. I end up being forced to upgrade when I'm down to one working port. My current T14 just rolled past three years old (Note: never dropped). Like clockwork, the main USB C combined "charger port" died at 2.5 years old. If you hold it just so, it works for a second. I've moved on the second USB C port that can also charge the machine. I'll order a new ThinkPad in a 2-3 months.
Lenovo needs to connect the tiny USB C female adapter to the mother board with a much beefier fastener. The little clips they use give way after 4-6 cycles a day * (2 or 3) years. They are difficult to solder back on.
I miss coaxial power connectors on laptops. They don't fail.
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One issue. Since the 2000's every ThinkPad I've had has developed issues with the USB ports. I end up being forced to upgrade when I'm down to one working port. My current T14 just rolled past three years old (Note: never dropped). Like clockwork, the main USB C combined "charger port" died at 2.5 years old. If you hold it just so, it works for a second. I've moved on the second USB C port that can also charge the machine. I'll order a new ThinkPad in a 2-3 months.
Lenovo needs to connect the tiny USB C female adapter to the mother board with a much beefier fastener. The little clips they use give way after 4-6 cycles a day * (2 or 3) years. They are difficult to solder back on.
I miss coaxial power connectors on laptops. They don't fail.
Some laptops have the USB-C port on a little daughterboard, so when it breaks it's an easy module to replace. And yes, I miss proper coaxial plugs for laptops too. They last forever and the plug can go it at any angle. If the cable on the charger frays it's easy to replace the plug.
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One issue. Since the 2000's every ThinkPad I've had has developed issues with the USB ports. I end up being forced to upgrade when I'm down to one working port. My current T14 just rolled past three years old (Note: never dropped). Like clockwork, the main USB C combined "charger port" died at 2.5 years old. If you hold it just so, it works for a second. I've moved on the second USB C port that can also charge the machine. I'll order a new ThinkPad in a 2-3 months.
Lenovo needs to connect the tiny USB C female adapter to the mother board with a much beefier fastener. The little clips they use give way after 4-6 cycles a day * (2 or 3) years. They are difficult to solder back on.
I miss coaxial power connectors on laptops. They don't fail.
Some laptops have the USB-C port on a little daughterboard, so when it breaks it's an easy module to replace. And yes, I miss proper coaxial plugs for laptops too. They last forever and the plug can go it at any angle. If the cable on the charger frays it's easy to replace the plug.
Framework (https://frame.work) has the most easily accessed of that feature.
Didn't/don't ThinkPads use those rectangular power connectors?
Personally I think USB-C is another of them planned obsolescence conspiracy thingies - at least on laptops.
I've swapped out more laptop motheboards for "loose," "wiggly," "flickery" and "it only works if you hold it in just the right way" USB-C ports than any other reason.
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Yeah, they used to use the rectangular power connectors until 4-ish years ago - but I think they've all gone USB-C now.
We have a mix of L14, P15 and X13 models here, all post-2020 models and all have USB-C chargers. There might be an old X1 kicking around that still uses the rectangular port but it's probably the only one out of hundreds of ThinkPads we have that uses that connector.
To be fair, we probably have between 500 and 600 ThinkPads in service and I can count on one hand the number of times we've ha
Trackpoint (Score:1)
Not just about lack of change (Score:2)
Dell a few years ago had huge failure rates where I had a dozen DOA.
I had only one with HP. And while HP was great at some points they had a lot of morphing in their Elitebook products compared to Lenovo.
I never had one failure on arrival with Lenovo in my experience.
I've also always liked the customer support when calling in issues with Len
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Yep, love mine (Score:2)
The Eraser-Head Mouse is so Ergonomic! (Score:5, Insightful)
My kingdom for that eraserhead mouse on a non-Lenovo laptop!
The ergonomics of that stupid thing are so much better than any other laptop trackpad or other mouse-like device ... but no one except Lenovo offers it :(
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The ergonomics of that stupid thing are so much better than any other laptop trackpad or other mouse-like device ... but no one except Lenovo offers it :(
That's what patents do to innovation, it keeps nice things in limited supply.
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Never seems to work as well as the Thinkpad ones though. The stiffness isn't right and the software acceleration is off.
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Including the macbook's trackpad? Because I loathe every other trackpad on every other laptop ever manufactured, but Apple's trackpads actually beat the mouse for me. It's a combination of the massive size, incredible sensitivity, and smart software to eliminate the effect of accidental touches.
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I one one on my Toshiba 510 p133 back in 2000
Only laptop I can use (Score:3)
I can use a touchpad and make it work, but it's never a comfortable experience, and it's nowhere near a substitute for a mouse. My Trackpoint, on the other hand, can replace a mouse entirely. I've used it many times to draw schematics and design multilayer PCB's in KiCad, to make 2D mechanical drawings, and to do minor photo editing in Gimp.
Dell also used to provide a Trackpoint, or something like it. But their implementation wasn't comfortable, and Dell pissed me off enough times that I won't deal with them again. Besides, the Thinkpad keyboard itself is far better than any of the other laptop keyboards I've tried. And Linux compatibility has always been seamless.
I'd love to have a Frame laptop, because of its freedom and flexibility and upgradeability. But without a Trackpoint equivalent, it's a non-starter for me.
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I had a couple of HP Elitebooks with them. I've had a couple of Thinkpads, and the ZTM on the HPs were as good as IBM's. They even had a decent tap to click. Great keyboards, too. Unfortunately, the first one had a G71 GPU...
Anywho I think Toshiba does them also?
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Thanks for the suggestions. They prompted me to do a search, and I found this: https://thunderboltlaptop.com/... [thunderboltlaptop.com]
I'd never heard of Dynabook before, and never considered that Asus might have a Trackpoint.
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ASUS also currently has world-trailing service.
https://www.reddit.com/r/India... [reddit.com]
https://zentalk.asus.com/t5/ro... [asus.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/ASUSR... [reddit.com]
https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/... [asus.com]
https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/... [asus.com]
Please don't patronize ASUS until they get their customer service fixed. If not for everyone else, then for yourself. It's absolutely crazy that the article you linked claims ASUS has good support, I can only conclude that they were paid for that specifically. They are perhaps on par with HP, anothe
Not just business users (Score:4, Interesting)
I settled on ThinkPad's at work many years ago.... but my home laptops and those of many of my friends are Lenovo ThinkPads as well. (Note- these are the real deal, not the other lines which are NOT the same, like IdeaPads, Yoga's, etc). I tend to recommend them to everyone.
Why? Because they just work. They tend to work very well with Linux, they have good keyboards, and are built well. There are rarely any negative "surprises" or trendy nonsense. And the BIOS is straight-forward and doesn't fight me.
And although they are pricier than their lower-end stuff or other brands, if you shop carefully, you can find pretty good deals. I scored an upgrade to my previous ThinkPad Twist about a year ago, directly from Lenovo's site. A ThinkPad X12 AMD Gen 2 for a great price. And I have been extremely happy with it. EVERYTHING works under Linux (wifi, screen, audio, accelerated video playback, all the ports, webcam, fingerprint reader, etc), as usual. Good display, very fast, good keyboard, quality touchpad. It is my first AMD laptop (my home desktops have been AMD for many, many years) and I highly recommend it.
I have yet to have a SINGLE ThinkPad die on me, at work or home. One user even dropped one and broke the plastic at the corner of the display and still worked fine. The worst problem was a 6-year-old one at work had a noisy fan, and I easily swapped in a cheap, new, knock-off fan obtained from Ebay and still running fine (and that was years ago).
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Back is scratched. There is a small fault in the screen at one point. It is brighter there. Looks like something pinched it there. But it still works. Next
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>"A ThinkPad X12 AMD Gen 2 for a great price."
Sorry, I meant to say X13, not X12
Same with MacBook Pros... (Score:2)
ThinkPads have been around a while, and have been the standard of business. Heck, IBM even made one that ran AIX and used CDE for its graphical environment. Overall, they are something that has been around, and effectively timeless.
However, I also see MacBook Pros also owned by top brass for the same exact reason. Other than ports, an aluminum unibody MacBook Pro has looked the same for a long while, and is also a standard in the meeting rooms.
Both laptops are a known, reliable standard, which is why nei
Lenovo trackpoint wireless keyboard and Frame.work (Score:1)
Wrong universe (Score:3)
Excuse me, I'm sorry, i must have warped into the wrong universe, get me back into the one where these two images look different
https://images.wsj.net/im-9890... [wsj.net]
https://images.wsj.net/im-9890... [wsj.net]
Still waiting for a laptop (Score:2)
With a left-hand trackball. I'm 48 and have never bought a laptop for this reason. I'll probably to to my grave without ever buying one.
Changing the keyboard... (Score:2)
And briefly switching away from hardware trackpoint buttons. God dammit that was frustrating on my W540. I just ended up using a mouse. Ultimately, when I needed a laptop with a good GPU, I had to go with Dellienware and learn to use a trackpad.
Both it and my IdeaPad craptop require me to use FN+ up down arrows to PgUp and PgDn. I hate that. I wish ThinkPads had kept that 7 row (8 if you look at the right side with the spot to give the arrow keys more space) keyboard design. It was just better.
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Both it and my IdeaPad craptop require me to use FN+ up down arrows to PgUp and PgDn. I hate that. I wish ThinkPads had kept that 7 row (8 if you look at the right side with the spot to give the arrow keys more space) keyboard design. It was just better.
Traditional full-size keyboards have Home/End/PgUp/PgDn available on the numeric keypad, switchable via NumLock. Now a lot of larger laptops also include the numeric keypad, so this could be a sensible place to keep those keys available. But of course, they don't. I've got a Lenovo Legion "gaming" laptop since I sometimes need GPU power on the road, and it also has this idiocy; the numpad keys still double for other keys but not in the traditional way, and the quartet in question is found on the arrow keys
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I had to look up what TKL is. I learned something new today so thank you. I now know there's a term for my preferred style of keyboard. I still occasionally mentally kick myself for not taking the 1000+ TKL "Model M" keyboards my school district threw out while upgrading from the old IBM PS/2 all-in-one machines back in 1998. Those keyboards are amazing (and drove my a-hole brother nuts with the clicking because I can type faster than I talk).
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I still occasionally mentally kick myself for not taking the 1000+ TKL "Model M" keyboards my school district threw out while upgrading from the old IBM PS/2 all-in-one machines back in 1998. Those keyboards are amazing (and drove my a-hole brother nuts with the clicking because I can type faster than I talk).
I kind of grew up using laptops and in the early 00s I found a laptop-like keyboard: the IBM Space Saver. It's essentially TKL but unfortunately with mushy keys. I think it was intended to mimic some aspects of Thinkpads, so it's all black and has a trackpoint, though the keys are full size. Later Space Savers are much closer to Thinkpad keyboards.
I think "TKL" is a more recent term that came about when gamers started to use different variants of mechanical keyboards. So I too got myself a "gaming" keybo
Lenovo added the logo dot, but not the Red Knub (Score:2)
The red keyboard knub has been there all along. This is an old IBM thinkpad ad:
https://archive.org/details/IB... [archive.org]
I figured the red knub was a back reference to HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, since HAL was named after IBM with letter rotation
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The red knob was a brainstorm by Ted Selker at IBM Research in the 80s. Ted is a great salesman. That knob hurt my finger joints, so I never used it. The idea was that you wouldn't have to take your hand off the keyboard to control the mouse cursor. Ted was interested in ergonomics.
But if you like change ... (Score:4, Funny)
It would be great if you could still buy Thinkpads (Score:2)
Unfortunately, just like the rest of the industry, Thinkpads got worse and worse. For example newer models have non-replacable RAM or hard to replace, and tiny, batteries. On some models the keyboard is hard to replace, and the days the keyboards had drains are also long gone.
A "Thinkpad" today is roughly on par with a consumer laptop 20 years ago... however all other manufacturers have also fallen in quality... so they still are kinda on top.
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There is no soldered form factor for LPDDR ran until this year at any rate.
You can but thinkpads now with replaceable RAM
high failure rate on gen3 (Score:2)
The gen3 T14s seem to have a really high failure rate. Its generally the motherboard (as per what the depot replaces). I support about 600 of them and rma at least three a week with the same exact problem. Does not post just suddenly. Sometimes the user just goes out to lunch and comes back. I dont believe they are breaking them through misuse as it happens so much for us. They did not fix it with the gen4 either as i am pretty sure that they also come in like that. I mean its a laptop, so they get tossed a
I love it (Score:1)
Trackpoint (Score:2)
I have never come across anyone who used a track point other than a support call who had to because the touchpad had failed. They were very thankful when I gave them a wireless mouse as the reason for the failure was coffee and it was outside warranty!
Has anyone ever encountered someone happily using track point?
not my experience (Score:1)
Superfish (Score:2)
Love them (Score:2)
Been buying these things almost as long as IBM/Lenovo has been making them. Consistency and predictability are points to be sure. But my reason is simple -- Lenovo has sustained the level of service documentation that IBM started. These machines are easy to dismantle and replace failed components -- which are readily available both from Lenovo and 3rd parties. So we get a long life out of the machines. Not like the Hp laptop my wife had a few years back where the internals depended not just on the model but
Anecdotes are not data (Score:2)
I had an excellent experience with my W520. No complaints.
I suspect that one reason people prefer Thinkpads is they are business grade machines. There is a significant difference in quality and durability between consumer and business laptops, and Thinkpads are the latter.
Framework is the new Thinkpad (Score:2)
My last Thinkpad, a T480, was the last of what made them great(ish) - easily serviceable, well built, compatible, comfortable.
Even so, Lenovo had already started with their silly whitelisting of devices in the BIOS, so no WiFi upgrade for you unless officially improved. Lenovo also made batteries difficult to buy, and expensive when you find them.
I side-graded to a Framework 13 - moved my memory and SSD into a bare chassis, which took less than 5 minutes on the Framework side. Got faster WiFi and an NVME in
thinkpad (Score:2)
I got my first IBM Thinkpad in 1999 I think it was. It still works just fine. Since then, I have gone through I think 5 Lenovo Thinkpads, all of which failed with dead hardware within a few years. I don't buy anything from Lenovo any more. Currently using Dell XPS. It has driver bugs, but oh well.
It's the trackpoint (Score:2)