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Comment by eveningcoffee | Hacker News Reader

Can we please also have a track point with 3 buttons? Thank you!

Exactly. I've been in need of a new laptop, so I've been looking at ThinkPads because of exactly this reason, and honestly, it's one of the things stopping me from getting a laptop from a Linux-friendly vendor.

Also, I think 14" is there perfect size for a laptop. 15.6" feels too big, 13" feels too small. I'll get the 15.6" if there's no other option, but I'm not going to give up my TrackPoint and middle button, which I maintain is the best way to browse the web.

Has anyone outside IBM/Lenovo ever managed to ship a TrackPoint that worked as well as the "real" ones? I love TrackPoints, but my experiences with them on non-IBM/Lenovo machines have been disappointing at best.

(Which is bizarre, since the first TrackPoint machines came out in the early '90s, so you'd think any patents IBM/Lenovo lean on for their great implementation would have expired long ago by now. Unless there's some patented discoveries they made after the first versions shipped.)

I've been thinking about making my own with load cells, but I guess looking up those patents and seeing how IBM/Lenovo did it is a good idea before I start.

It really doesn't seem hard though. It seems to me the trickiest part is getting the acceleration curves set correctly so that it feels nice to use. But that should be a matter of software/configuration, not hardware. High resolution readout from the load-cells seems essential, so that you can have precise readout of very low forces, giving the trackpoint a light and airy feeling without compromising precision.

Lenovo have, in the past five years, stopped implementing the things that elevated the experience, and now use the same modules that Dell uses. It's a shame, but at least we can still get three buttons.

My Tex Yoda 2 keyboard's trackpoint is really good. It's not identical to a standard trackpoint, it has much more "throw" since it needs to be a lot taller to clear the full size switches/keycaps, but you get used to it.

This is the sole reason I have not purchased from them. As long as Dell and Lenovo are the only three-button pointing stick vendors, they'll be the only ones who can sell me computers.

As a replacement I can mention following tip: in Linux (in Hackintosh as well) pressing left and right trackpad buttons at the same time results with a pressing middle button. I remember I found it when once I left mouse at home and I had to make few changes to my 3d model in Blender during labs at university.

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