Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 131 posts

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#61

Post by spankibalt »

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…

Turn the ThinkPad X12 into a modernized and more maintainable HP ZBook x2 G4, complete with EMR stylus. Keep the size or make it even smaller. Offer a bunch of first-rate keyboard options. For both machine's got the best form factor in that size-class there is: the detachable, the evolution of the convertible of yesteryear. It's really not hard to figure out.

Whatcha get instead? Garbage like silly rolling-display laptops. Or even worse, The Homer of the laptop world: these bizarre contraptions with two or three foldout displays. It's just missing a cup holder.

Framework borked it here as well. I just don't understand why you waste time, energy and money on developing and building a substandard machine (Framework 12) in an outdated form factor.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#63

Post by goosedragons »

bArray wrote: post #58

> 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 mus…

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.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#65

Post by dekhn »

In England the nub was referred to as the nipple.

I had a series of think pads. I think the last one was a t61p running Lennox and it was truly glorious. I can't remember if it was that model or an earlier one which had a battery known as the tumor which stuck out the back. You could hibernate the laptop and swap in another battery and turn the laptop back on and keep working without rebooting.

Everything since then for me has been MacBooks or Dell laptops. Neither brings me as much joy.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#66

Post by cosmic_cheese »

al_borland wrote: post #51
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.

I believe that impression comes from the laptop feeling “hollow” more than it does from it being light.

This could probably be engineered around by doing things like holding the battery up against the laptop’s palm rest with a rim of TPU or similar between the battery and the case to deaden vibrations and make it feel more “solid”.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#67

Post by cosmic_cheese »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #12
walterbell wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> aspect ratio of the display Meanwhile, Apple sold 500+ million HiDPI 4:3 displays on iPads. Do they have a supply chain lock on 4:3 screens?

Possibly. It’s hugely expensive to order a completely custom screen, and I know Framework waited for a long time for a better 3:2 display to come onto the market after the initial one—the current better panel is actually a compromise that loses some pixels to rounded corners, which is fine but IMO not “pay $270+tax+shipping for the upgrade” fine. Looking at the specs of the screens, I’m almost sure that both the orig…

The big selling point of the higher tier FW13 screen option is that it’s conducive to 2x/200% UI scaling, which is surprisingly rare in x86 laptops and is desirable under Linux. Fractional scaling displays technically work but have some notable quirks, where 2x scaling has worked flawlessly for a long time.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#68

Post by al_borland »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #66
al_borland wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe that impression comes from the laptop feeling “hollow” more than it does from it being light. This could probably be engineered around by doing things like holding the battery up against the laptop’s palm rest with a rim of TPU or similar between the battery and the case to deaden vibrations and make it feel more “solid”.

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

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#69

Post by cosmic_cheese »

al_borland wrote: post #68
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that impression comes from the laptop feeling “hollow” more than it does from it being light. This could probably be engineered around by doing things like holding the battery up against the laptop’s palm rest with a rim of TPU or similar between the battery and the case to deaden vibrations and make it feel more “solid”.

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

In cases where there’s no component that would naturally add weight in the right place, yes.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#70

Post by criddell »

ginko wrote: post #19
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…

No one asked for a 16:9 thinkpad though.

I did. I like having two documents side-by-side and I think it works out well on a 1920x1080 (or 3820x2160) display.
Post reply on HN