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ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

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Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#121

Post by dontlaugh »

maratc wrote: post #116
dralley wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're trying to ape the Apple layout. I agree, it's annoying.

They were trying to ape the Apple layout without even understanding the Apple layout. Apple layout works because the most used modifier is "Command". There are two of them, on both sides of Space. You can quickly find them without looking at the keyboard: put a thumb on the (extra-wide) space and move to the side until you get to the next button. That's "Cmd". Less-used button is Option, there are two of them, next t…

I swap Alt and Ctrl on Windows/Linux to gain the nice ergonomics. I haven’t regretted it yet.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#122

Post by goosedragons »

nosrepa wrote: post #81
goosedragons wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPD has some. Particularly the GPD Pocket 4. 8.8" Notebook with a AMD HX 370 processor and up to 64GB RAM. Can even work as a KVM.

I have one and I love it, but damn do I hate the key layout on it. Which is a shame because they have saner layouts on some of their smaller offerings.

Yeah, I don't have one but it is tempting. I was thinking maybe of using Kmonad or something to turn the ; key into some sort of layer shift if I got one. But I'm already pretty used to using key layers.

I think they did it that way to make a more usable keyboard for touch typing at that size? The smaller devices like the Win Mini seem to have more like thumb keys.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#123

Post by AlecSchueler »

lproven wrote: post #109
whyenot wrote: post #85

Maybe I’m just sentimental, but My Thinkpad x300 was the toughest, most productive laptop that I have owned. I took that laptop deep into the Amazon where it was exposed to near 100% humidity for months. It’s plastic / polycarbonate shell stood up to a tremendous amount of abuse, and it’s keyboard was awesome. Times have changed and now I mostly use Apple products, but they are not nearly as tough, or have as nice of…

I run Fedora 42 on one, and it's surprisingly nippy even today.

Even my x200 is ticking along fine here on the latest Debian.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#124

Post by ktallett »

scrlk wrote: post #36
ktallett wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too costly to have two LEDs? I question if that is the case.

The 25th Anniversary ThinkPad was a modified T470. I assume that the cost issues were related to a requirement to minimise the number of case modifications required from the stock T470. Incorporating a ThinkLight would require a redesigned display lid.

I get what you mean but still, it's a one off special edition. A company as big as Lenovo doesn't need to do everything for profit. I would understand if it was a new model design that could sell tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands but the T25 was a limited run, make it beautiful.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#125

Post by [deleted] »

MereInterest wrote: post #113
al_borland wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven’t some products been found to have weights inside just to make them feel more premium?

Yup. The most prominent I can remember are the Beats By Dre headphones, where about a third of the weight is from metal parts that are either purely decorative, or whose functionality does not at all depend on being made of metal, based on a 2020 teardown [0,1]. [0]: https://beneinstein.medium.com/how-it-s-made-series-beats-by... [1]: https://beneinstein.com/how-it-s-made-series-yup-our-beats-w...

[deleted]

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#126

Post by MBCook »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #87
MBCook wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Dense = quality (and thus expense) is something people think. I don’t know if it’s innate or learned, but I would certainly like to.

My theory is that this is a sense that people picked up on thanks to the outpouring of various cheap electronics from China from the 90s onward. They tended to be enclosed in thin plastic shells that were sometimes larger than necessary in attempt to increase visible differentiation from competitors sharing the same internals. This made them feel hollow, and people associated that feeling with cheapness. By contrast,…

I suspect you’re probably right, but also that it goes back further.

Think well-made solid mixer, like an old KitchenAid stand mixer, versus a similar thing made of plastic. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as heavy. And it’s obviously much cheaper and wouldn’t feel as solid.

I guess I’m with you that it sort of came from the plastic age maybe? I wonder if it was really much of a thing before that.

then again it’s also easy to tell that a solid oak desk, or some other heavy wood, is better than something made of press-board or balsawood. so maybe it is even older.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#127

Post by fao_ »

dehrmann wrote: post #25

A general takeaway from this is that there were a number of innovations that made sense at the time, but as the landscape changed, they lost their utility. The butterfly keyboard wasn't needed once screens got larger. The switch to widescreen mean the 7th row of keys competed with the trackpad for real estate. The lid latch was no longer needed as screens got lighter. Top-of-screen keyboard lighting got replaced by b…

> The switch to widescreen mean the 7th row of keys competed with the trackpad for real estate.

Sure, but I would have preferred a smaller trackpad.

The lid latch was no longer needed as screens got lighter.

Their solution of ratcheting metal and plastic very tightly limits the lifetime, I'd prefer the latch so I don't have to worry about this in the future.

> Top-of-screen keyboard lighting got replaced by backlighting.

Top of the screen was better for, as another commenter posted, ambient lighting.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#128

Post by taskforcegemini »

riedel wrote: post #100
elric wrote: post #48

I think optimising for thinness is a stupid goal. I get wanting to reduce weight , but volume and mass are two different metrics. Thicker laptops can have better cooling, bigger batteries, easier maintenance, a bloody ethernet port, and probably better keyboards. For some reason Lenovo has made the ThinkPad keyboard worse with every new generation. They're still better than other laptop keyboards, but my goodness the…

I like my Z13. Despite the non-thinkpad look, they finally did a bit of engineering together with AMD to get the cooling working again (copying from the Mac as well). It the least Thinkpad I ever had (no hardware track point buttons), but I am still quite happy (the x395 was a cooling catastrophy IMHO). However, i agree wrt repairs. I had my mainboard, my screen and my keyboard replaced, due to broken cables and swit…

cooling was an unsolved problem in any laptop I ever had (most but not all of them being thinkpads). with thinkpad fans often needing replacement

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#129

Post by taskforcegemini »

Elfener wrote: post #54

The trackpoint and the nice keys are one thing, but what I really want all laptops to have is dedicated home/end/pgup/pgdn keys and in a normal-looking layout (as in 7-row or as in a full keyboard). I find it weird that even framework has gone with a keyboard where a bunch of keys are missing. (Sent from my Thinkpad T410)

for that very reason I got a t25 and recently an old used x220 and two x220t (the latter two for the superior screen)

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#130

Post by lproven »

maratc wrote: post #114
lproven wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes, I travel with my nearly-15-year-old Thinkpad T420 in preference to my MacBook Air M1. The Macbook has a horrible keyboard with no travel. The buttonless trackpad is a pain to use; it's very hard to right-click and even with a 3rd party FOSS app to give me 3-finger middle-click, it's almost impossible to do it precisely. I use middle-click hundreds of times a day, but I have no use for trackpad gestures. It…

> I am not a tablet user. It's unclear why you chose the Air then. It's designed as a lightweight entry level portable for people with minimal requirements.

I didn't. It is a work machine.

I smashed my right arm to bits in early 2023. I was unable to use that hand for months. I asked for a machine which could take dictation. This is what I got.

And I have to admit, it's now my go-to machine for remote events, conferences and so on; it replaced my Planet Computers Gemini.

But actually working at a desk using the thing is not very pleasant. I regularly see MacBook fans praising the keyboard and the trackpad, but IMHO they are awful.

E.g. I am often told that macOS includes middle-click support, by people who don't know that their mouse has 3 buttons. The existence of this paid app:

https://middleclick.app/

And multiple generations of this FOSS alternative:

https://github.com/artginzburg/MiddleClick

... effectively falsify that.

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