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Comment by PetitPrince | Hacker News Reader

What kind of expertise is needed for you guys to have a trackpoint in the keyboard?

There's a vocal minority of people (I count myself in) that really, really like trackpoints and would love to have a Framework laptop with this kind of pointing device. I think it would be more productive (or perhaps its wishful thinking on my part) for you people to say something like "we need to shave x mm from the Thinkpad one to match or requirement" or "we need x dollar to hire someone / to let our product engineer spend y amount of time on this project.

(and I'm of course ignoring the dozen or so patents that probably prevent you to implement this... but I really really like trackpoints)

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The barrier is primarily tooling costs. We'd have to have high enough confidence in the incremental sales of it to cover what would likely be in the mid six digits of custom tooling (Input Cover plastic and aluminum tooling, tooling for a three button trackpad, tooling for a new version of the keyboard with a cutout for a pointing stick, and a small amount of tooling for a semicustom pointing stick to fit that cutout).

FWIW, I'd happily pay $99 for the addition.

What do the numbers look like for just a three-button-above touchpad, without the stick?

There's a lot of ThinkPad loyalists. Having a TrackPoint would give you easy access to this market.

They are already onboard. And the number of loyalists reduces every year so it's a dying market.

Well, I'm using a ThinkPad right now and I don't own a Framework. Even though I tend to like each successive model less and less, I'm kind of resigned to my next laptop being a ThinkPad too :-P.

Whether the market justifies the investment is not a question I can answer, but the Framework looks pretty decent otherwise and if it had a pointing stick keyboard I would buy one and give it a go.

I think I paid about £300 for my TeX Shinobi, so I guess I'd be prepared to pay a similar premium on a laptop.

I agree with the sibling comment. There's no real alternative to the trackpoint. Nothing comes close, but the initial hour or so of using it is weird ; frankly, I don't remember it because I did it about 20 years or so ago, but everywhere I've worked, I've made sure to buy a keyboard with a trackpoint.

Currently I'm using the Tex shinobi keyboard, and before that I used the IBM USB keyboard with the X220 layout.

When navigating with the mouse on the web, I currently have my thumb for the mouse buttons, my index finger on the trackpoint, and middle, ring, and index for movement on the HJKL keys. Nothing beats that for speed and hand movement a mouse is a little more accurate, but I'm willing to trade that for not moving my hand all the time. (I also just realized I switch hands a lot for moving the mouse - not something you can do with a mouse.)

Do you think the Tex Shinobi is worth its price? I'm familiar with the Thinkpad X200 keyboard and interested in the Tex Shinobi, but find it a bit hard to justify spending that much on a keyboard. (I am a software engineer and do spend a lot of time on keyboards and I do value a good keyboard.)

1000% I have three of them currently.

That's convincing :) Good to know, thanks!

Mine came in the mail today and within 5 seconds I was completely in love.

I had my first TrackPoint contact when I joined IBM. They gave me a ThinkPad 755CD. They still owned the PC Division. There was no touchpad, so it took me about 30~60 minutes to get used to the trackpoint (maybe less). Since them I have had countless ThinkPads, personal and at work, an I always disable the touchpad entirely. I am sure that if most people had to use the trackpoint, they won't want to go back.

I was really into using my trackpoint until suddenly my index finger literally started trembling uncontrollably whenever I tried using it. I think its because it requires too much force to move the cursor or I guess my ligaments are that weak although Im still young. Sadly had to give up using it since it was quite convenient

You can / should change the sensitivity so it doesn't require so much force. I like it to move all the way across the screen with very little effort ; if you're getting finger strain, you should look into its settings.

I agree, look into the sensitivity. On my x250 the trackpoint was almost unusable until I increased the sensitivity/acceleration

Get a fresh cap! The caps only last about a year of heavy use. You can find replacements on amazon and elsewhere. It doesn't even matter if it's really oem, a fresh third party one will still be much better than a worn oem one.

How do you scroll with the trackpoint? I have a ThinkPad and the trackpoint is nice, but I always end up back on the touchpad for two finger scrolling. I used to use scroll bars, but they are so small these days that they’re really only useful as an indication of where you are in a document.

Middle click with thumb, mouse with index finger for moving through the document.

A proper trackpoint is supposed to have three buttons. The middle button works the same as on a desktop mouse: while holding the button, moving the cursor scrolls the page.

Among the few laptops that still include a trackpoint at all, I'm seeing more and more omit the third button, rendering the nub a vestigial ornament, requiring a fallback, as you've said, to the touchpad. I'm very disappointed; should I ever need to buy a new laptop, I expect to find myself up the proverbial creek.

Middle click and moving the trackpoint up and down works for me.

Hold down the middle button and drag. Some older models don't support this and with some Linux distros/DEs you have to configure it manually.

Trackpoint was so vastly superior to touchpads for the majority of the existence of the laptop that it's only natural that people that were computing when that was the case just completely eschew the touchpad on their laptop, even to this day. That plus the fact that there's little impetus to change (unless you force yourself by purchasing a laptop without a nub).

With that being said, I think Apple finally nailed the trackpad. It's far better than those original trackpads that came on ThinkPads that was so comically small you couldn't really use it on top of absolutely horrendous drivers. I think for the most part trackpads on Windows laptops are pretty competent as well, at least on the higher end models. Windows precision drivers went a long way to matching the experience of using a trackpad on the Mac. On Linux the basics are mostly fine though it's still kind of a mixed bag.

I thought I preferred trackpoint; turns out I don't.

I felt this way back then when trackpads sucked.

But today trackpads are really good, especially the ones that ship on MacBooks. I can't imagine going back to the trackpoint any more than I can imagine going back to the trackpads of the '00s. Good multitouch gestures in particular make a trackpad way more versatile and improve my productivity a lot.

> a trackpoint in the keyboard?

non-ironically, this is the last thing that is giving me doubts between going for the frame.work for my next laptop or sticking to old-trustworthy thinkpads.

Just to add support to this sentiment, I am also pretty on the fence but I think a trackpoint would push me over. I've used Thinkpads for the last 7 years and I'm looking to buy a new laptop soon (in the next 1-2 years). If framework adds a trackpoint, I will buy it.

Of course, this is a silly solution, but...

Since you can buy seperate keyboard parts... and if you don't mind a bit of drilling / replacing some keys with custom keys / manual fixing of damaged traces on the pcbs...

Just drill a hole in the keyboard, file it off, and buy a trackpoint module from ebay, It'd probably work well enough!

- - -

that aside, making an expansion card which has a trackpoint on it, or notching it into just above the keyboard area, would probably be the most doable options, without needing the company to catch up

I don’t use my thinkpad’s trackpoint all the time, but it’s excellent for cramped situations where you don’t have the space for the arm movements required to use a trackpad effectively. If nothing else it’s an extremely good feature for a mobility-focused machine.

- https://community.frame.work/search?q=trackpoint

- not yet .. but this is ~ Open Design .. so I hope some 3rd party company will create.

This is the only thing that keeps me coming back to ThinkPad nowadays.

the trackpoint is what i miss most coming from thinkpads. when you know, you know.

i'll also add that IBM/Lenovo's trackpoint is much better than alternatives, I've found. they are to trackpoints what apple is to trackpads.

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