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ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

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Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#51

Post by al_borland »

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…

When something is large and light, the consumer view is that it is cheaply made. That's a problem when trying to sell an expensive product.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#52

Post by Melatonic »

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…

I'd take a Thinkpad without a trackpad all together - I always disable mine in the bios anyways.

Still also prefer thinklight to backlit keyboards but that's less of a necessary

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#53

Post by Melatonic »

garciansmith wrote: post #16

I miss the ThinkLight (and the dual-light idea he had sounds great). Useful when working in a dark environment to look at papers and whatnot, or just to provide a nice amount of ambient light to smooth out the contrast between the screen itself and your surroundings. Most modern laptops have backlit keys, but those don't help in those cases; they are pretty much only useful for people who can't touch type.

Exactly - the light was far more useful than just for illuminating the keyboard

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#54

Post by Elfener »

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)

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#55

Post by mananaysiempre »

nrp wrote: post #50
mananaysiempre wrote: post #2

> "It's very difficult to make a seven-row keyboard anymore because of the aspect ratio of the display and the whole arrangement of the pieces on the inside," he said. "It's a decision that was not made lightly, however. I still like the seven-row keyboard and, as aspect ratios change, and they continue to change, I don't know. Maybe someday somebody will be interested in it again." The sad part is, the Framework 13…

We have 1.5mm key travel, the keyboard is replaceable, and the vast majority of our keyboard artwork options don’t have a Copilot logo.

All true. My previous laptop was a 2014 MBP, and the two basically feel the same. I’d say the MBP’s layout is marginally worse because of the stupid power key and the half-size left and right arrows, and of course the MBP’s construction makes your life hell if you spill liquid on the keyboard and need to replace it. (Framework’s prohibition on freight forwarding makes my life difficult in the same situation, but that’s a me problem—I should have taken the hint that I wasn’t wanted when I was jumping through hoops to buy it in the first place.)

It’s not a bad keyboard. As far as laptops of the last decade go, it’s even a good one. But the up/down arrows sucked on the MBP and they (though not left/right) suck on the FW13, I expect(?) because a rectangular keyboard ends up cheaper than one with protruding arrows.

Furthermore, my (grandparent) comment was about how vertical shrinkage made the keyboard smaller but the FW13’s taller screen didn’t restore the missing keys, and if half-size up/down arrows just suck to use, Home/End/PgUp/PgDn hidden behind Fn suck to a Pavlovian extent: I didn’t realize how much the MBP trained me out of using them before I had to use an older ThinkPad for a bit that had them on separate keys. I won’t even mention Ctrl-Break except to look in its direction wistfully.

Finally, the Copilot key is of course a distraction. I don’t know what it actually sends on those keyboards, but if I can map that to Compose I couldn’t care less about what’s drawn on it. It’s just sad that, after everything, that distraction is what ended up being the first substantial change to the FW13’s keyboard.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#57

Post by nh2 »

nrp wrote: post #50
mananaysiempre wrote: post #2

> "It's very difficult to make a seven-row keyboard anymore because of the aspect ratio of the display and the whole arrangement of the pieces on the inside," he said. "It's a decision that was not made lightly, however. I still like the seven-row keyboard and, as aspect ratios change, and they continue to change, I don't know. Maybe someday somebody will be interested in it again." The sad part is, the Framework 13…

We have 1.5mm key travel, the keyboard is replaceable, and the vast majority of our keyboard artwork options don’t have a Copilot logo.

Please just give us an option to buy a 7 row Thinkpad keyboard with Trackpoint.

There are talented keyboard makers like Tex that already pulled this off, making better hardware than Lenovo itself, and you could instantaneously win most Thinkpad users over, likely permanently.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#58

Post by bArray »

> However, Hill said, he thought about putting a butterfly keyboard on a netbook when they were a viable product category in the late aughts.

I really want to see sub-11" notebooks again. They were super cool travel laptops.

> The dual lights would have eliminated shadows and provided even better illumination, but unfortunately, this effort proved too costly to make it into the final product.

Ridiculous. Function must be allowed to win sometimes.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#59

Post by jtwaleson »

scrlk wrote: post #46
penguin_booze wrote: post #39

One gripe I have with Lenovo keyboards is that the Fn key is at the left-most edge of the bottom row. Per my muscle memory, it's the Control key that ought to be there, not Fn.

Starting in 2024, Lenovo adopted the 'conventional' control/function key layout for ThinkPads.

The keys are identical though, so if you're careful you can swap the physical ones back to the proper way ;)

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#60

Post by jtwaleson »

marttt wrote: post #38
divbzero wrote: post #35

I still have my 2005 ThinkPad X41 which has both a TrackPoint and a ThinkLight. The laptop has a dead battery, but works as good as new when plugged in.

On my trusty T42 (bought ~10 years ago for about 30 euros) the GPU finally died last winter (heavy, unreadable screen flicker during every slightly more intensive task). It has an IPS panel which itself still seems to be in order, though. Luckily, I accidentally saw a similar one (no IPS, though) for 26 euros, so I'm rocking again. Those 4:3 screens and T4x series keyboards are really hard to let go, and if your acti…

I believe you can reflow the soldering on the GPU on the T42 by heating it up, this was a common problem.
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