
My personal fight against the modern laptop [video] - setra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzmm87oVQ6c
======
psankar
The 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.

~~~
justinsaccount
> 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
Caveat: 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)

~~~
justinsaccount
> 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.

They are a little less concave than the older keys, but they aren't flat. The
lighting in that picture isn't the same for both laptops. [1] is a better
angle.

> That said, I thought it was pretty bad-ass you had both laptops and took a
> photo for us.

It's not my photo, though I do have a t420s and an x230, just not an x220 :-)

[1]
[http://blog.lenovo.com/images/uploads/blog/CS12KBD_180degree...](http://blog.lenovo.com/images/uploads/blog/CS12KBD_180degree_20120523_crop.jpg)

------
0xADADA
This 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
I'll never understand this. If you want value for money why even look at
apple? Never mind nuances like planned obsolescence.

~~~
jalfresi
I 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.

~~~
ryanmarsh
This. I'd wager that the entire set of hardware and software tools most of us
use to make a year's worth of income could be purchased with two weeks of
income (or less). The laptop being the majority of it. That's pretty
astounding.

So yah, did I just drop ~$2,500 on a new MBP? Yes. Did I enjoy spending it?
No, but I also want the thing to "just fucking work" and it's a tiny fraction
of my income considering my last Apple laptop lasted me almost 4 years...
before I dropped it.

------
kk_cz
He'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
Sadly yes, I'm still using my x220 rather than move to a x260 because of the
keyboard.

~~~
peletiah
I'm on a x200s. Except for a brighter screen, I'm not missing anything though.

------
ethereal_int
Personally 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
:)

~~~
cr0sh
If 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
Yes, 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.

------
hartator
yeah, it feels like in 2010, you had awesome mac and pc options. Snow Leopard
was perhaps the best OS ever.

~~~
ClassyJacket
Snow Leopard was so stable. I went months at a time without restarting or
having major bugs. I wish we could get that reliability back.

~~~
balls187
(12:46) ~/src/landedcost/main-site/app/utils [vikram7119-master] $ uptime
12:47 up 15 days, 17:26, 4 users, load averages: 2.09 2.15 1.95

Sierra has been an absolute rock for me.

My last reboot was due to an OS update.

~~~
bluedino
I'm not sure I'd brag about a 15 day uptime.

I found I had to reboot Snow Leopard every 30-40 days, but running 3 web
browsers with a ton of tabs open will do that.

~~~
balls187
Who's bragging?

------
nullc
I really wish they still made the x61(t)s. :( Nothing currently available at
any price really holds a candle to them. :(

~~~
timthelion
Yeah, 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
Oh, 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?

~~~
timthelion
I also forgot, that I had to UPDATE THE EUFI/BIOS to get the fan to work after
ACPI resume! The origional EUFI/BIOS was actually broken.

------
lathiat
LinuxConf... AU. Just saying :)

~~~
CalRobert
What is it you're saying?

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aamederen
this video gave me multiple hack-gasms, it is like hacker-porn.

~~~
type0
You are not on reddit, here's the link:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/](https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/)

