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Comment by danw1979 | Hacker News Reader

danw1979·

The trackpad and “nipple” on thinkpads are awful to use. Maybe if you run full screen emacs all day and everything is a keyboard shortcut then this might seem like the best laptop in the world…

.. but I’ll die on Apple hill, clutching my 2012 aluminium i7 Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard, with it’s glorious glassy trackpad, 1000BaseT cable still connected.

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Having worked with the nipple for the better part of 15 years, I disagree. Although I do appreciate and have switched to MacBook pro with their incredible touchpad, after the initial switch I had an infected tendon in my underarm.. managed to find an RSI free way of operating it, but the big plus of the nipple is the lack of motion in your wrist and arm. And your hand is very close to typing position as well.

It does take a while to become fast and precise, but when I was, it worked wonderful.

The thing that really sold me on the utility of the nipple was trying to use a laptop while riding in a car on a rough road.

Up till then I mostly ignored it, mainly because I was used to trackpads. but that stupid red wart on my keyboard turned the experience from massively frustrating to actually usable.

So a niche use case to be sure. but it is definitely a feature I look for now.

See also: trying to use a touch screen in a moving vehicle.

Trackpoint is brilliant, you can leave your fingers on the home row. I don't see how anybody could use a trackpad after using a trackpoint for a couple days, which is all it takes to get used to one.

The nipple was and is fine but decent trackpads were absent from thinkpads for a very long time.

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