Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem
by jinushaun on Monday November 14, 2011 @09:56PM
(#3236785)
"The Air's keyboard was not bad, but it had an annoying layout with small arrow keys and an odd ordering of meta keys along the bottom."
It's interesting that people cross shop MacBooks when looking at Windows PCs, especially given the Mac's unique keyboard layout.
Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem
by tikhonj on Monday November 14, 2011 @10:00PM
(#3236805)
I was not looking for a "Windows PC"; I was looking for a light, fast laptop. I wouldn't use either Windows or Mac OS unless I really had to, so the operating system doesn't really matter to me.
The only unfixable annoyance I noticed on the Mac keyboard was the arrow keys; the rest could have been ameliorated by changing the keyboard layout a bit, I think (unless it's somehow codified in hardware).
Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem
by guylhem on Monday November 14, 2011 @11:21PM
(#3237008)
Interesting. What was problematic with the arrows compared to a PC? The inverted T is pretty standard. Do you mean the lack of home/end/pgup/pgdn ?
I could point you to solutions I use like controller mate - pretty handy to remap.
Guylhem
Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem
by tikhonj on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @12:14AM
(#3237136)
I like it when the arrow keys are about as big as all of the other buttons. I find it very uncomfortable to use the extra-thin keys, particularly when playing games (which, thanks to Emacs, is where I use arrow keys most of all).
Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem
by jarek on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @12:11AM
(#3237129)
The arrow keys are tiny. Half-height makes the rest of the keyboard look nicely symmetrical but it makes people suspicious.
FWIW, I use Thinkpads as my personal laptops and I find the half-height arrow keys on my Apple wireless keyboard fine, but mileage may vary.
The screen is really awesome, it's incredibly fast and I actually really like the touchpad. The keyboard is not great, but none of the options I physically touched--I never saw a physical Lenovo X1; that could be good--had particularly good keyboards. The Air's keyboard was not bad, but it had an annoying layout with small arrow keys and an odd ordering of meta keys along the bottom.
Overall, I am extremely pleased with this computer and would probably buy it again, although I would also consider looking at the X1. However, an X1 configured to similar specs as the Z costs about the same and I've heard both the screen--which is really awesome on the Z--and the batter life are worse on the Lenovo.