I believe thinkpad is one of the few laptops left that has what's called a stick? you know the little nub on the keyboard that you can use instead of a touch pad, and in reality it's way better than a touch pad. god I hate touch pads.
I wish I had bought a thinkpad.
It's not quite the same as a scroll wheel in that there are some programs where one scrolling technique (wheel or trackpad) will work while the other won't, but it's similar enough to handle most cases.
and infact on linux you can modify the area of the touchpad that does this. I think you can even add horizontal scroll if your touchpad didn't previously support it (not 100% on this).
In other words: if I'm in Safari, I can remap three-finger swipe to changing tabs, swipe down for new tab, rotate right/left to back and forward, etc. It's very useful.
(The better screen rez on the D830 is another)
http://www.thinkwiki.org is the best resource I'm aware of for Linux + Thinkpad installation tips.
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPo...
My MacBook Pro is my second Apple laptop (the first was a G4 powerbook) and it is going to be the last unless things change rapidly before it goes u/s.
- The keyboard is ok, but the metal finish is slippery.
- The large track pad forces typing with wrists at odd angles.
- OS X is horrible (all my applications are Linux native so work oddly on OS X, plus no focus on mouse being my biggest two complaints - the rest are subjective/personal).
- No region crack for the DVD player, which is unacceptable for travel. Doesn't even work with VLC.
On the plus side the build quality is superb, the screen is good, and for it's size/weight the performance is outstanding. I certainly wouldn't trade it for anything other than a Thinkpad or maybe two or three Dells - one a year, for when they break ;)
I've seen people get OS X and then do nothing but run XP under virtualization because they can't be bothered to figure out the OS X native apps. I wonder what, exactly, you mean by "all my applications?"
Plus a few things that aren't so important, like xplanet and SuperKaramba.
Then again, these days, I use so few "Linux only" applications that it would probably be easier than ever to switch. My "regular usage" list is: vim, Firefox, Thunderbird, Perl, bash (and all of the GNU tools, like sed, grep, find, locate, awk, etc.), GIMP, Inkscape, VNC, KVM. But I'd still have to have Linux boxes or virtual machines around, because I need build environments for a dozen or so Linux distributions. And bash and the GNU tools are so vital to my workflow that I'd be suffering a lot of the time.
So, I've considered getting a Mac so that I'd be surrounded by great design (I'm becoming more of a designer and usability guy within my company every day, and my design sense is still woefully inadequate for the job, and I've read on numerous occasions and from numerous sources that one great technique for improving is to surround yourself with great design), but it'd certainly be painful.
Also, middle-mouse-button paste is vital to my happiness, and neither Mac OSX nor Windows has it.
You may have to learn new shortcuts or how to configure things in Windows or OSX but it is all doable. For windows you may have to install Cygwin or PowerShell to get a respectable prompt.
I use a windows box at work. I use Mac and Windows at home. I recently switched from Ubuntu to OSX and I ran into many of the same problems initially. I wanted things to work exactly the same as Ubuntu and that just wasn't happening. After about three months I learned many of the OSX shortcuts and finally configured and set up my linux programs for OSX. Now it's all good.
So, my statement agrees with yours, I think.
I have worked in Windows environments quite a bit when doing contract work, and I'm familiar with Cygwin, but it's not an acceptable command line environment--the way it chafes when doing anything outside of the Cygwin environment is too much friction.
Mac OS X is slightly better now that it has bash by default. But its system tools are weak compared to those found on Linux systems. I feel this same pain when using Solaris and FreeBSD. In all three cases, it's possible to install good versions of those tools, but I have to retrain my fingers to call gawk instead of awk, etc.
Again, it would be easier than ever, because vim has good versions on both Mac and Win, and Perl runs fine everywhere. Firefox and Thunderbird, too. But retraining myself to work in the Mac or Windows way would be uncomfortable. And I hate being uncomfortable.