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One of the things I miss about older laptops is the keyboards. I would love to buy a laptop that is built like a PowerBook G4 or a ThinkPad X61 but with modern
by linguae 6y ago
One of the things I miss about older laptops is the keyboards. I would love to buy a laptop that is built like a PowerBook G4 or a ThinkPad X61 but with modern displays and modern internals, and with extra bonus points if it has user-replaceable batteries and user-serviceable storage and RAM. I've found the Thinkpad X62 (https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/ https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/) and X210 (https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/03/04/thinkpad-x210/ https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/03/04/thinkpad-x210/) projects rather intriguing. Unfortunately I missed out on the 2017 ThinkPad T25, which I would have purchased had I not been strapped for cash at the time.
One idea that I have is for a laptop manufacturer to develop a chassis that comes with a high-resolution display and a high-quality keyboard (like those of older ThinkPads), and where the user can supply an Intel Compute Stick or a similar device for computing power. This way the chassis can be used for a long time while the user upgrades compute sticks.
- mkeeter 6y agoHave you seen the MNT Reform? https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-more-personal-computer.html https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-more-p... It's not as powerful as most modern laptops (uses an iMX8 SOM, rather than an x86 CPU), but it's got a full keyboard, trackball (!), replaceable batteries, etc.
- aww_dang 6y agoThis deserves a discussion on the front page.
- acqq 6y agoFor anybody like me who didn't know: the mentioned iMX8 is NXP's "i.MX 8M Family - Arm® Cortex®-A53, Cortex-M4, Audio, Voice, Video" https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/arm-processors/i-mx-applications-processors/i-mx-8-processors/i-mx-8m-family-armcortex-a53-cortex-m4-audio-voice-video:i.MX8M https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers... And: "i.MX8M has four 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 cores, an additional Cortex-M4F core, faster PCIe, USB3.0, a better GPU, and much higher memory bandwidth." https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2019-05-20-reintroducing-reform.html https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2019-05-20-reintroducing-r...
- ajford 6y agoIt sounds pretty cool, but that keyboard layout looks atrocious.
- weikju 6y agoNot entirely high res and high quality keyboards, but the NexDock offers that ability as a shell wheee you plugin a compute stick, phone, SBC, rack server, etc. AFAIK there are a few similar ones as well
- fermienrico 6y agoYou can build a hackintosh using a modern Thinkpad.
- truculent 6y ago> One idea that I have is for a laptop manufacturer to develop a chassis that comes with a high-resolution display and a high-quality keyboard (like those of older ThinkPads), and where the user can supply an Intel Compute Stick or a similar device for computing power. This way the chassis can be used for a long time while the user upgrades compute sticks. I have been thinking about this and I can see this as being one potential path for the future of personal computing, with phones (unfortunately) being the Compute Stick equivalents. If phone manufacturers made them more upgradable, I may even welcome this; however I don't see them jumping at that anytime soon.
- jeffbee 6y agoThe X61t came out of the box with a modern display, a 1400x1050 AFFS-IPS panel that is still respectable. Unfortunately these machines still sell for much more than $50.
- fomine3 6y agoThinkPad 25 (Anniversary edition) was cool that has good old keyboard with decent spec (at the time).