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Comment by blacksmith_tb | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the Lenovo-ification of Thinkpads mostly seen as a fall from grace, though? I haven't had one, but my impression is that they're viewed as being not too different from the rest of the market these days.

I will say I have generally been happy with the Asus products I have bought, I have one of their laptops, and a motherboard in a tower, along with a wifi mesh setup, all of which have worked fine for me.

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Well, they have TrackPoints. I did learn to live without a seven row keyboard the last two years -- previously I even bought the collector edition ThinkPad 25 to put that day off as far as I could -- but living without a TrackPoint? I am not keen on pawing at the wrist rest in a futile attempt to precisely move my mouse pointer. Mind you, I can barely use a mobile phone either, I hate the touchscreen keyboard with a fiery passion. I am efficient with my ThinkPads and https://xkcd.com/1806/ applies very heavily.

Also, there are some claims by ThinkPad fans about it being sturdier and easier to repair still. I do not know how much truth is in this. Lenovo still does publish Hardware Maintenance Manuals, do HP/Dell?

Business Models from Dell and HP have "trackpoints" too though, just not under the same name.

1. I believe despite the negative inertia patent have expired they have not implemented it which makes it really weird to use it.

2. I think Dell stopped doing that. Example: https://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/del... that's a Dell Precision. I think HP still has it but without the middle button it is really hard to use.

The latest T series are still the ThinkPads we love. Bought one for wife’s brother. That thing is well built and well performing.

They are good machines, but they are losing core spirit: built with plastic, keyboards more and more different compared to old-school, cut on upgradability every year, in latest AMD T you can't even upgrade RAM, in old Ts you could put tons of RAM and giant battery.

Yeah they kept the quality for a while but they're really sacrificing too much now.

They still have better keyboards. But they are shaving a little bit of key travel off every generation sadly :(

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