38 ms·
My personal fight against the modern laptop [video]
- psankar 10y agoThe new thinkpad keyboards are absolutely shitty. I am happy that more people are complaining about it. The classic thinkpad keyboard had nice ergonomic aspects. You can touch-type the function keys without looking down, because they are all grouped in four. The arrow keys are proper sized buttons (even the macbook has it wrong). There is a slight curvature on each key's surface that makes it easy for the finger to feel the borders. All of these are missing in the new keyboards. This chiclet design is the worst thing to happen for the thinkpads.
- odiroot 10y agoFunnily enough the curvature was the reason I didn't like Thinkpad before. Now, after moving to chiclet, I find Thinkpad keyboards (especially T series) to be the best on the market.
- bostand 10y agoI have both and can't really say which one i like most, they are both great. There are however a lot of cheap ideapads and lenovo chromebooks with really awful chiclet keyboards. Avoid at all cost!
- floatboth 10y agoHave you actually tried the new keyboards? The X240 chiclet keyboard is excellent, I enjoy every moment of typing on it. The only better keyboards are the mechanical ones, which are way too thick for a laptop. (And function keys ARE grouped in four!!!)
- justinsaccount 10y ago> (And function keys ARE grouped in four!!!) Ah, looks like just the 30 series lacked the grouping, they brought it back on the 40 series.
- justinsaccount 10y ago> You can touch-type the function keys without looking down, because they are all grouped in four. This is true. The new Fkeys are not grouped. > The arrow keys are proper sized buttons (even the macbook has it wrong). This is false, look at the linked image[1] and tell me that the arrow keys are different on the new keyboard. > There is a slight curvature on each key's surface that makes it easy for the finger to feel the borders. This is also false. The chicklet keys are slightly concave and the island layout makes it extremely easy to feel the borders of each key. > All of these are missing in the new keyboards. Again, this is false. > This chiclet design is the worst thing to happen for the thinkpads. This is subjective. I have both keyboards, and I like the new style better. I'm a linux user and I use vim. I've probably pressed the Fkeys 10s of times in the years I've owned either laptop. The entire row could be removed and I probably wouldn't even notice. It's fine if you don't like the new keyboard, but the reasons you are giving are simply not true. [1] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ksPFqBdMikM/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ksPFqBdMikM/maxresdefault.jpg
- inanutshellus 10y agoCaveat: I'm entirely going off your image[1]. I have neither laptop. >> The arrow keys are proper sized buttons (even the macbook has it wrong). > This is false, look at the linked image[1] and tell me that the arrow keys are different on the new keyboard. Looks like the old laptop has a different height for Left, Right, and Down compared to Up, PageUp, PageDown. Is that really the case? If so, that'd be a pretty noticeable difference for a user of the original design. >> There is a slight curvature on each key's surface that makes it easy for the finger to feel the borders. > This is also false. The chicklet keys are slightly concave and the island layout makes it extremely easy to feel the borders of each key. Just going off the shadow from your image, there's a marked and well-defined difference between the concavity. If my fingers were used to that concavity, I'd be unhappy with the much, much flatter design. Arguing that he's propagating falsehoods is overshooting. That said, I thought it was pretty bad-ass you had both laptops and took a photo for us. [1] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ksPFqBdMikM/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ksPFqBdMikM/maxresdefault.jpg
- 10y ago
- SomeHacker44 10y agoMaybe, but the new MacBook Pro keyboard is so loud I have been banned from the bedroom with my laptop. (TouchBar is also terrible.) What a disaster.
- floatboth 10y agoReally? I can understand someone complaining about a keyboard with Cherry MX Blue switches, but a laptop? :D
- inanutshellus 10y agoThat's funny. I remember my audiophile pals back in the day ooo'ing and ahhh'ing over the old mbp's keyboard being satisfyingly quiet-but-not-silent.
- delroth 10y agoMy Thinkpad keyboard still has the function keys grouping (Esc-F1-F2-F3-F4 F5-F6-F7-F8 F9-F10-F11-F12 Home-End-Insert-Delete). I think it's only the first generation of chiclet keyboards (the one used in T430) that didn't have it, and they fixed it later.
- lathiat 10y agoLinuxConf... AU. Just saying :)
- kk_cz 10y agoHe's right about the new keyboards on ThinkPads - fortunately I use mine with dock and external keyboard most of the time, but every time I am forced to use it without dock it's infuriating how much worse the keyboard is compared to older models.
- xarope 10y agoSadly yes, I'm still using my x220 rather than move to a x260 because of the keyboard.
- peletiah 10y agoI'm on a x200s. Except for a brighter screen, I'm not missing anything though.
- TurboHaskal 10y agoSome of us like the new Thinkpad keyboards.
- Shikadi 10y agoYup, I love my keyboard on my Thinkpad Yoga 15. Though since it's a 15 inch laptop, my fn keys are grouped by 4, I have a full num pad, and the key spacing feels correct. I went through four laptops before this one and kept returning them because either their keyboard was literally poop and didn't pick up the spacebar all the time, or the screen was so flimsy I didn't trust it in a backpack. The HP Spectra was really nice, but it was too small and the keyboard was the worst. They've improved the keyboard a tiny bit since then, but it's still mediocre, especially for a premium model.
- kk_cz 10y agoThe point is not that it's not better compared to other brands (it mostly is). The point is that it used to be better.
- 10y ago
- aamederen 10y agothis video gave me multiple hack-gasms, it is like hacker-porn.
- type0 10y agoYou are not on reddit, here's the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/
- nullc 10y agoI really wish they still made the x61(t)s. :( Nothing currently available at any price really holds a candle to them. :(
- timthelion 10y agoYeah, I moved from an x61t that had a cracked motherboard, after however many years, to a thinkpad yoga 12 with stylus and touchscreen. After about a week of use, I was in the bath, and I wanted to do something with my laptop, and I reached over and typed something into chromium. I didn't realize that the new yoga's don't have flow through keyboards! My laptop was ruined by the water from the wetness of my hand! Now the laptop is fixed, and a few months later I can say, the screen hurts my eyes (never had that problem before), the feet on the bottom have all come unglued, battery life is acceptable but not great, battery cannot be hotswapped, that's for sure, but mostly, I feel that this new yoga just doesn't have the sex appeal of the x61t. I could hold that x61t from any corner (probably how the motherboard eventually cracked) and the laptop just felt balanced and solid. There was no creaking of plastic on plastic, no hollow "softness"... I don't know, that laptop just was so perfect, and the yoga 12 feels like they just didn't put as much love into it. When I turn on the LEDs unter the keyboard ( a new feature ) light leaks out of some keys around the edges, while not leaking out from other keys, and the leaks shine brighter than the screen, again hurting my eyes. The power and volume keys on the right edge are hard to feal, so I have to look at them to use them, hardly convenient. There are all sorts of extra bright leds on the keyboard like the FN lock light. I've taken to turning off the fn keys because that LED drives me crazy. And the new flat powerconnector is total shit when I want to change from laptop to tablet mode. I have to unplug it and replug it! Why move from a connector that could rotate "automatically" to one that gets all twisted up and will have to be replaced in a year or two? And the keyboard that is supposed to lock in tablet mode makes weird crackling noises when transitioning from one mode to the other. And the RAM is hard wired onto the motherboard and cannot be upgraded. All this in a laptop which cost more than the x61t. WTF :( I want my real thinkpad back!
- timthelion 10y agoOh, and I forgot one of my biggest gripes. There are no arrow keys in tablet mode! How the fuck am I supposed to read in tablet mode without arrow keys? Constantly reach out and touch and drag the screen? Are you kidding me?
- hartator 10y agoyeah, it feels like in 2010, you had awesome mac and pc options. Snow Leopard was perhaps the best OS ever.
- subinsebastien 10y agoI really liked the fluid looking UI, the bulb-like window control buttons and the nice glass effects. Modern macOS GUI is not that interesting or nice to work with. [1] http://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/MacOSXSnowLeopard1.jpg http://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/MacOSXS...
- ClassyJacket 10y agoSnow Leopard was so stable. I went months at a time without restarting or having major bugs. I wish we could get that reliability back.
- 0xADADA 10y agoThis talk expresses many of my concerns with desktop & laptop hardware over the last few years. Recently however, Apple has changed their hardware design philosophy from a fairly open platform to a more proprietary and disposable one. They’ve eliminated the ability to change or upgrade components. The 3rd generation MacBooks have a battery that is glued in place, the memory is soldered directly to the logic board. Later models would come with the hard drive soldered down as well. Lyle Wiens of iFixIt, said it best in 2012 > "When Apple dropped the MacBook Air to $999 in 2010 to match the price point of the MacBook, they gave users a clear choice: the thin, light, and un-upgradeable MacBook Air or the heavier, longer lasting, [upgradable], more rugged, and more powerful MacBook. Same price, two very different products. At the time, I wasn’t very happy with the non-upgradeable RAM on the MacBook Air, but I respected that Apple had given their users a choice. It was up to us: Did we want a machine that would be stuck with 2GB of RAM forever? Would we support laptops that required replacement every year or two as applications required more memory and batteries atrophied?" Consumers overwhelmingly voted yes, and the Air grew to take 40 percent of Apple’s notebook sales by the end of 2010. This sort of vendor-lock down and planned-obsolecence has bothered me to such an extent that the next laptop I buy won’t be Apple hardware. Meanwhile, Apple has secured an oligopoly in the market, they have such a dominant position with hardware manufacturers that they seem to be squeezing competitors out of getting access to top-quality components (or their competitors don’t care about quality). These manufacturers seem to be building computers with “Apples’ scraps and leftovers”. Put simply; I don’t see any manufacturers building laptops at the same level of quality that Apple does, and yet, I can’t buy a product that is so tightly controlled, and designed to be obsolete in two years.
- branchless 10y agoI'll never understand this. If you want value for money why even look at apple? Never mind nuances like planned obsolescence.
- jalfresi 10y agoI don't want to waste my time dicking around with drivers and other such noise - I want to get on with my tasks. An operating system linked to s fixed set of hardware provides me exactly this. My time is worth far more to me than the cost of a Macbook.
- ethereal_int 10y agoPersonally I'd like a heavy and large desktop that fits in a typical backpack complete with batteries, with a thin ultrabook like wireless screen+keyboard, detachable like the surface. I know i'm in a very tiny minority, but eventually with streaming solutions like the TPCast for Vive it might be viable (you can diy a 12volt desktop from 18650s, but probably not a good wireless hdmi yet). Or if not, hopefully when we get lighter and less obvious AR goggles. I'm very aware it's a pretty impractical idea but i find it fun to think about :)
- ianai 10y agoSomething like that was my day dream when the original iPod came out. I even emailed sjobs suggesting it.
- ethereal_int 10y agoGlad to know i wasn't the only one :)
- cr0sh 10y agoIf it's already in a backpack, why would you need a wireless connection to the HMD? Understandable, though, if you want to sit the pack down but still use the system. Probably what would be better would be some kind of wireless datalink to the HMD, and have the video processing on the HMD itself (instead of sending frame/interframe data - just send the data to render the frame, and let the HMD do the processing - essentially moving the video card to the HMD - this would, though, still require more than a bit of bandwidth, but maybe not as much as HDMI?).
- ethereal_int 10y agoYes, basically have it somewhat stealthy, where i would use the laptop as a laptop and sit the backpack anywhere in the room. And moving the video card to the HMD wouldn't make that much sense for me because that's the main desktop part i would like to stay desktop class. And I think Google and Microsoft are hoping to get a version of this with hololens and tango, where they run machine models and cloud resources when needed and just get the results/models to run on the mobile devices. Still very much in its infancy though.