Keyboard innovation is making them worse

Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by dman on Friday January 17, 2014 @05:49PM (#7079006)

Also of note - if youre buying a 15 inch pc laptop you now get a numeric keyboard by default whether you want it or not. This also has the side effect of making the keyboard and mousepad layout assymetric since the keyboard and mousepad are now pushed to the left to make way for the numeric keypad on the right. The only two machines I know that dont do this are the dell xps 15 and the dell m3800 but both of them are > 1800$s. Quest for the perfect laptop continues.

EDIT: other major quibble - backspace needs to be the right most key without any nearby power / other buttons. When I violently hit backspace to delete code that I know is wrong I dont want embarassments like hitting delete instead or powering off my machine.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by MichaelGG on Saturday January 18, 2014 @12:49AM (#7080249)

Lenovo lost at least $800 of revenue from me because of this. I was going to get the T540 or W540 ($2400+), but the idiotic keyboard layout means I can't really type in front of it without feeling a pain in the neck. Now I'll probably get a T440p, although I'm very wary of the lack of physical buttons for the trackpoint (and the reviews are mostly negative).

The X201 and other earlier keyboards are damn perfect. Full size 7 row, including the propery 6-key pgup-dn/del-ins/home-end. Has break and sysrq. I'd pay a $$$ to put this keyboard on a W540 or T540.

Other things like removing LEDs for power charging, but adding them for mute and fn lock (or removal of screen hinges) show that the last of decent IBM engineering is gone, replaced by some idiot managers intent on locking slick instead of satisfying their high end customers.

It wouldn't surprise me if on the next gen, another laptop line surpasses ThinkPad. Lenovo inherited ThinkPad with such a huge lead on everyone else, it's taken them a while to totally screw it up. It's only because other OEMs suck so much more that ThinkPads are still in the lead.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by ohazi on Saturday January 18, 2014 @06:11AM (#7080744)

I have a T540p at work, and the lack of touchpad buttons means you need an incredible amount of care when clicking. I don't really mind the keyboard, but that thing is torture without a mouse.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by MichaelGG on Sunday January 19, 2014 @02:47AM (#7083776)

I used the trackpad, but the trackpoint buttons, especially the middle button (for easy scrolling and opening/closing tabs/windows). Is this practical anymore?

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by bashinator on Friday January 17, 2014 @06:01PM (#7079071)

15" MacBook Pros do not have a numpad, but it sounds like you don't want that price range.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by dman on Friday January 17, 2014 @06:03PM (#7079085)

Money is one factor. The other factor is that I dont want a retina-esque screen right now since I will be running linux on it and kde and chrome's support for hidipi screens is not great right now.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by m_mueller on Saturday January 18, 2014 @12:09AM (#7080165)

They still sell 15'' Macbooks without Retina.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by _delirium on Saturday January 18, 2014 @04:34AM (#7080622)

I believe that was discontinued in the October 2013 refresh. Unless I'm missing options hidden somewhere else, Apple has a summary here of all their current laptop form factors here: http://store.apple.com/us/mac/compare

It looks like the current options are:

11" and 13" non-retina MacBook Air

13" non-retina MacBook Pro

13" and 15" retina MacBook Pro

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by m_mueller on Saturday January 18, 2014 @05:23AM (#7080694)

Ok sorry about that - I saw one a few days ago in an electronics store but it was labeled as 'remainder'.

I wish Apple made a matte retina macbook - made discontinuing the old 15'' will put some pressure on them doing so.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by TheSoftwareGuy on Saturday January 18, 2014 @12:01AM (#7080148)

Man that sucks. Almost every one of this guy's gripes are non-existant on a Mac.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by dman on Sunday January 19, 2014 @10:02AM (#7084578)

I want to run linux - retina displays don't work well with it. If I could make do with OSX I agree the MacBook Pro 15 would be nice (save for the location of the power button)

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by bashinator on Monday January 20, 2014 @09:37PM (#7093076)

If you're not tied to the idea of running native, I'm running various linuxes in VMWare Fusion on my MPB and full-screen mode works perfectly. The only thing you might find annoying is the lack of middle-click for pasting selections when using the touchpad.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by keypusher on Saturday January 18, 2014 @02:07PM (#7081845)

You think it's going to look worse on higher pixel density?

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by dman on Sunday January 19, 2014 @09:59AM (#7084568)

Yes I know that it does because I own a Chromebook pixel that I run linux on.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by chiph on Saturday January 18, 2014 @02:55PM (#7082009)

The new rMBP have a different keyboard weakness -- the power switch is right above the Delete key, and has no protection against accidental presses.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by MatmaRex on Friday January 17, 2014 @06:50PM (#7079302)

Thinkpads T500-series (T500, T510, T520, T530 and variants) and their W counterparts are 15' (or larger) and have no numpads. The new ones are pretty expensive too, though.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by dman on Friday January 17, 2014 @07:27PM (#7079448)

I meant the current generation inch 15 inch laptops. Lenovos current gen (x40) has numpads sadly. This includes T540* and W540. http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t540p...

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by MatmaRex on Saturday January 18, 2014 @06:08AM (#7080741)

Ugh, I didn't realize :/ That sucks. But as the sibling poster says, Thinkpads are at least nicely upgradeable.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by MartinCron on Saturday January 18, 2014 @12:36AM (#7080221)

I just bought a previous gen Lenovo for that very reason. Still vey capable, especially when upgraded.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by mattmanser on Saturday January 18, 2014 @05:03AM (#7080659)

Not having a numeric keyboard is one of my major gripes with laptops.

Once you learn how to use them they're so much quicker than the numbers row if you have to do any number crunching.

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Re:Keyboard innovation is making them worse by catinsocks on Saturday January 18, 2014 @02:16PM (#7081872)

They are much easier and faster but I don't find myself entering numbers often enough to be an issue.

I can see if you are a worker who enters accounting information all day or have data entry with your job for extended periods of time how it would be invaluable but for what is regularly done on a computer I don't find myself needing it much anymore.

If I did need it I would probably buy a number pad to hook up to the computer (there actually looks like a huge selection for usb number pads for under $30).

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