
The stupidest trend in laptop design - tshepang
http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-stupidest-trend-in-laptop-design-is.html
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gojomo
People who use their Windows laptops primarily for business/accounting data-
entry tasks love the number pads.

This blogger does not know the market better than the large and profitable
manufacturers selling into it. The manufacturers have real numbers backing
their decisions – not subjective aesthetic and ergonomic hand-waving. If
customers weren't choosing (and even paying extra for) for the numpad, it'd
disappear quickly.

~~~
MichaelGG
Lenovo's been shipping 14" and 15" business laptops with 1366x768 screens for
a while, and no one seems to want that. No users were benefited by trimming
ThinkPads to a 6-row keyboard, yet they pushed ahead with that anyways.

HP shipped plenty of laptops with massive heat issues (literally painful to
the touch, even sitting idle at the MS Store).

To think that OEMs always know best is wishful thinking. Although in the case
of a numpad on a large style laptop, I'd probably prefer it.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Oh great, the typical Lenovo-doesn't-know-what-they're-doing comment. And of
course it's completely wrong. Tons of people want 1366x768 screens on their
15" laptops. Otherwise it makes everything too small! That's what they think
and that's what they want. And having the 6-row keyboard helps touchpad users,
which is the majority of the Thinkpad customer base, have larger touchpads,
and a smaller overall chassis with bigger palmrest, especially on the X240 but
also on the T440s and T440.

~~~
MichaelGG
I don't know what you mean by "makes everything too small". 1366x786 is
shipped on 10" laptops just fine; saying it's needed at 15" is silly. Not to
mention, Lenovo doesn't even offer many alternatives, except on the higher-end
models.

The only good thing is that Apple is showing them up, so they're finally
responding in kind, rather than racing to the bottom against Dell and HP.

As far as vertical space, which you argue as a positive of the 6-row layout,
is negated by the fact they switched to a less vertical screen, and hence,
keyboard.

Edit: As far as Lenovo doesn't know what they're doing... do a screw count on
modern designs. Look at how much work is involved replacing the most common
part (fan) - you've got to take _everything_ out. I've no reason to believe
the high-level technical decisions are being made more intelligently than the
obvious lack in quality at the low-level.

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nekojima
I am very happy to have a numpad on my laptop (first time I've had one after
five laptops without) and in all likelihood would only buy a laptop in the
future with a numpad. The balancing issue took a few minutes to get used to,
if I use on my lap, but otherwise, it was an easy adjustment to make. Using
the numpad when entering figures into Excel or other programs is much easier
than before when using the top-line of the keyboard, and no longer need to
have a usb desktop keyboard around to help with that.

~~~
soneca
I am an average user, not an accountant or anything like that and I like a lot
the numpad. For filling forms (Phone, house number, postal code), passwords,
basic Excel use, etc.

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hnha
> numpads on laptop keyboards.

to save you the clickbait.

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davidw
No, the worst trend is the squashed screens. People writing - be it English or
French, or source code of some kind, or for that matter, many other kinds of
creating, work vertically, not with these super wide but not very tall
screens.

~~~
zokier
If your work consists of single text from one corner of the screen to the
opposite, then I guess your complaint makes sense. But for most people you'll
have all sorts of things open, and widescreen enables throwing that all to the
sides. There are plenty of examples: Photoshop (and GIMP, Illustrator,
InDesign, Inkscape etc) having tool palettes in the sides, IDEs with all sorts
of tools and document trees and whatnot, or if you are more of a text-editor
guy then still you can have eg documentation and code side-by-side, etc.

And of course for laptops, especially smaller ones, widescreen provides the
unique advantage of maximizing keyboard size to total body size as keyboards
are wide by nature. Admittedly this is less of a concern for 15"\+ models, but
I've never been a fan of those.

~~~
jamesbritt
_widescreen enables throwing that all to the sides._

Still unclear how having the extra 120 pixels of a WUXGA screen would make
that any harder.

1920x1200 (AKA WUXGA) was standard on Dell and Lenovo laptops for quite some
time, and then they decided to go short-screen.

This is what gets me: 1080p "HD" screens are not any wider than the previous
standard 1920x1200 screens, yet somehow that's how they are sold.

~~~
zokier
WUXGA? Standard? Really? I find that quite suspect.

~~~
davidw
My older Dell - from 3/4 years ago - had one of those screens. My latest one
is very nice. It's an XPS 13 with Ubuntu, but it has a shorter screen at the
same width. All the other specs are far superior to the older machine. It
irritates me.

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wrongc0ntinent
I need numpads for fast stuff. Numpad keys are also not just duplicate numeric
keycodes. Figure out a better laptop design, yes, but taking it out for good
eliminates some use cases. While you're at it, make function keys work
consistently across all manufacturers.

edit: and I love butterns.

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pmelendez
> "the numpad is useless for the vast majority of people, and those who need
> numpads, already use them at desktop (keyboard) or, can buy numpads"

Nice, yet another blogger that says that I do not exist. I need a numpad, and
I don't want to carry with another peripheral and no... I don't have a
desktop.

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dragontamer
I like my numpad. In fact, I bought my laptop explicitly because it has a
numpad on it.

And I also like the fact that the PC market caters to every niche. I know some
people don't like numpads on laptops, but I do. So you can buy a laptop
without one, and I'll go buy one with one. Bam, both of us are happy.

What is wrong with that?

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Amadou
Nearly 10 years ago I bought happy hacker keyboards without numpads for all of
my _desktops_ and I haven't missed the numpad one bit. I did get the model
with cursor keys though (edited to add:
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000U1DJ2/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000U1DJ2/)
).

Giant keyboards are even more of a waste of space and ugly eyesore on the
desktop than they are on a laptop.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Hacking_Keyboard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Hacking_Keyboard)

~~~
w1ntermute
> I did get the model with cursor keys though.

Do you mean the HHKB Pro JP? Don't the tiny spacebar and vertical enter key
bother you? Not to mention a bunch of symbols being in different places.

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generj
Number pads are _very_ useful to me as a programmer.

People forget that they aren't only useful for number entry...Num lock is
there for a reason.

It's a solution from the horrible absence/reconfiguration of the Home cluster,
as the numpad can be used for that purpose. And it can be used for rapid text
movement. If you aren't using numpad as a programmer, you might be suprised at
the code editing benefits.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Numpad.svg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Numpad.svg)

~~~
AdrianRossouw
i think the general consensus is to learn vim instead of messing with home
clusters.

~~~
generj
You can't use vim everywhere, and not everyone prefers it.

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lazylland
The really stupid trend in laptop (and most portables) design is non-user
replaceable batteries!! What can be at most a 10 USD, 30 second affair is now
a drive to the service centre, a two week (if lucky) wait and a 100 USD bill
...

~~~
LnxPrgr3
Wait, where are you buying new laptop batteries for $10?

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ChikkaChiChi
The stupidest trend in blogging is complaining about available options. Just
because you use a product a certain way doesn't mean everyone else does.

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hereonbusiness
16:9 display, glossy display, low screen resolution considering screen size,
glossy plastic chassis, numpad.

I would not consider buying a laptop that had any one of these.

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jblow
This is a bad trend, but eliminating trackpad buttons is probably worse. (The
fact that most people don't realize it is worse makes it even worse!)

~~~
ek
To be fair, Apple popularized the buttonless trackpad trend and is reasonably
good at executing it; originally I was skeptical of it but Apple's clicky
trackpads are very nice to use.

That said, Lenovo made the decision to integrate a Synaptics Clickpad in a lot
of the recent ThinkPads and it's basically untenable - on my ThinkPad I've
turned the trackpad entirely off because the Clickpad is just so unusable.

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tluyben2
I don't like numpads either, but I see why some people do like them. Low
resolution screens however; that does no-one any good I would say. And for me
it's downright annoying. I work mostly exclusively on laptops and having as
much room on one screen as possible is very valuable for me. 1366x768 is
insanely low and yet most laptops have had it for years.

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paulorlando
Good point. Liked the assessment of where eye focus is, though I often notice
that I position myself slightly to the left of my balanced laptop, perhaps
because I use my right hand for more than 1/2 of the keyboard.

~~~
generj
Why does it matter where eye focus is? Operating a keyboard shouldn't involve
your eyes.

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zokier
Hmm.. I just got an idea for a compromise: Put the numpad in the wasted space
below the keyboard

[http://imgur.com/zrZAeg4](http://imgur.com/zrZAeg4)

Centered keyboard, numeric entry, everyone is happy?

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RachelF
Tiny arrow keys on the keyboards are also stupid.

Most people use the arrow keys way more than CAPS LOCK but guess which
occupies more area.

Also needing a key combination for PgUp/PgDn Home etc.

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w1ntermute
I have no idea why numpads even exist on most desktop keyboards. They just
make it more difficult to reach the mouse. I use the Filco Majestouch-2 in its
"Tenkeyless" (no numpad) version[0], and it's great being able to reach the
mouse so easily.

0: [http://www.amazon.com/Filco-Majestouch-2-Tenkeyless-
FKBN87M-...](http://www.amazon.com/Filco-Majestouch-2-Tenkeyless-
FKBN87M-EB2/dp/B004WOF7QM)

~~~
jolt
I use the numpad for every number i type on my keyboard. It's much faster and
the time/energy i would save by having to move my hand a shorter distance to
the mouse, is no where near the amount of time/energy i save by not having to
look at the keyboard and find each individual number.

~~~
tluyben2
I have been typing with 10 fingers blind for over 30 years now and I have
used, first, the little nob some laptops had/have as mouse and now the
trackpad on the Macbook; I don't lift/move my hand from the keyboard at all to
use all keys and hardly for the mouse (trackpad). I type really fast at that,
including numbers. A numpad on a laptop would be rather a waste of space and
would slow me down as well as I would miss my right hand when typing words
instead of numbers.

I can see it's handy for some people (like most people like an actual mouse)
but I do see the OP his point; at least here most shops carry mostly laptops
with numpads and they are not an option. The choices are heavily limited
because of this.

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lamby
Don't disagree with any of that, but I bet the reason lots of laptops have
numpads is that when Average Customer sees a laptop with and without one next
to each other in a store, he will not choose the one without the numpad
because, well, "you never know". Or the one without doesn't look like a
"normal" keyboard: "maybe it's horrible to type on after a while?" etc.

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ChuckMcM
Or conversely put a pad of usefulness to the left of the keyboard as well to
maintain symmetry. I don't know about the author but if the G15 keyboard came
with a fully programmable 'number pad' like arrangement to the left of control
and a number pad to the right of enter I would be totally OK with that.

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Samuel_Michon
It’s even more annoying for people who are used to operating the trackpad with
their right-hand (as I am).

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vinceguidry
I used to think I wanted a laptop with a number pad on it, then I saw one that
actually had one, and hated it instantly. I feel bad for the poor saps that
did get one.

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mixmastamyk
Agreed. It is very hard today to find a cheap PC laptop without an
accountant's keyboard. I don't even like them on desktops, a waste of space
(for me).

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Shorel
I totally agree with this post.

Get your numpads out of my laptops!

~~~
nulagrithom
I agree with this personally, but I did have a user demand a laptop with a
built in numpad. She specifically said that a usb numpad would not cut it.
It's not to have at least one model that features a numpad.

~~~
Shorel
Yes, I can also see myself demanding one of those clit mouse keyboards.

However, this doesn't mean I can impose it on everyone.

~~~
nulagrithom
What's your point? She didn't say she wanted every laptop ever made to have a
numpad. Wanting a Lenovo TrackPoint doesn't mean you want it on every laptop
ever made, nor are you imposing it on anyone. Do you think it's wrong for
Lenovo to put it on their laptops? Do you think they should stop so that they
don't impose it on anyone?

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adam12
Design isn't all about looks.

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umsm
Legacy design is popular because it's cheap.

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almosnow
The stupidest trend in laptop design is... having a screen, you know, because
I just use my laptop to feed music into my sound system. I don't need a screen
I'm not even going to watch. And the mic input? The webcam? Come ooooon, are
the designers just that f.... stupid??? Why do they keep bloating laptops with
a lot of useless features that just add weight, moving parts and create health
problems in the long run???

