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Comment by jkldotio | Hacker News Reader

What are we up to now? Three preloaded spyware scandals, possible remote execution via the Intel stack and now this vulnerability. That's just what we know about, who knows what else exists. I don't think I can buy another one, which is sad as I think it was a timeless and great design.

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I plan on using my quad core T520 for probably another 5+ years. All of their laptops after the T520 series have the full size keyboard with numberpad which off-sets the center of the keyboard, so now your typing is mostly happing on the left side of the keyboard and that causes wrist strain.

Having a numberpad is really lame on a laptop. I won't buy one and I know of no one else that likes the numberpad either.. sadly many manufactures are doing the same.

Wow this was actually going to be a major buying factor in my next Laptop, was really considering a gaming laptop for the numpad but I guess it wouldn't be too difficult to buy a bluetooth numpad for the right side of the keyboard/get used to the numbers above the keyboard. Thanks for this angle. Never considered wrist strain.

Also hanging on to my W530 for a long time. One of the reasons (in a long list) is the centered keyboard.

Numberpad on a laptop is a deal breaker for me, too.

Some heavy Excel and Sage users would disagree.

> What are we up to now?

I am about to buy and advice to others the only freedom-respecting laptops [0].

[0] https://minifree.org/product/libreboot-t400/ and https://minifree.org/product/libreboot-x200/

AKA refurbished Lenovo hardware?

Yes, with BIOS replaced with free software and wi-fi card replaced with a freedom-respecting one. I do not see any problems in that.

I dislike how it does not do microcode updates though.

You could certainly do the microcode updates yourself.

Which would involve needing to reinstall the OS, or at least the kernel, because Trisquel strips out the kernel drivers needed to update the microcode.

I own a couple of Apple notebooks. Two years ago I bought a used X201 because I needed a Linux backup (official excuse) and because I love the design (actual reason). It's completely different from Apple's approach and Richard Sapper's original draft is still visible in those machines. And it runs Ubuntu just fine with an SSD upgrade and still enough memory for all purposes I have.

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