Chiclet Keyboard on Upcoming Thinkpad X230?
forums.lenovo.com
forums.lenovo.com
That's a dealbreaker from a developer perspective. In fact it's the reason the new Thinkpad I just ordered is not an X1. The X1 is a nicer machine in every other respect, but it has a funky keyboard layout, so I can't use it for development without taking a big productivity hit.
I still need to find a good way to make all computers on my desk share the Microsoft Natural and the Apple trackpad, but I'm not holding my breath.
These guys own the rights to make the Model M: http://pckeyboard.com/
I came across this keyboard/mouse sharing software the other day and have yet to try it out but it looks much more promising than synergy and claims there is zero configuration. (works on windows and mac)
The keyboard is one of the prime motivators for me to stay on ThinkPad. I guess if I don't beat the launch, I'll pick up a last-generation machine used -- hopefully at some discount -- and hope that it "lasts awhile".
I've been asking around, including on HN, whether anyone has experience with Lenovo's chicklet keyboards and whether they've managed to reduce if not remove the suck that I've experienced with other brands' chicklet keyboards.
P.S. I seem to recall seeing a story/photo implying that the T430 will have a chicklet keyboard, as well. Can anyone confirm or refute this?
They are nothing like normal chiclet keyboards.
I too hate chiclet keyboards. I hate laptop keyboards in general. But this keyboard is not as bad as I expected, and if anything, potentially better than the old ThinkPad keyboard.
First off, there is zero sway in the keys. They're typical ThinkPad stiff and sturdy. The travel is the right distance, so is the resistance of the keys. They're so tight that when I was swapping the Ctrl and Fn keys on my X120e, I felt that I was going to shatter them trying to get the keys off. They just wouldn't budge.
And the bigger reason I like these keyboards is, they have curvature, unlike every other chiclet I've ever used.
Most chiclets on PC laptops have zero curvature. Just completely flat, terrible. I can't find my way to the center of the keys, and it makes me furious when I start to typo because of it.
The recent MacBooks are 'okay', but they still don't have enough curvature. It's barely even noticeable, and I typo on MBP keyboards all the time.
You can see the amount of curvature in this picture: http://www.thinkpads.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/lenovo_t...
But I do recommend trying it out yourself. I'm still not sold on chiclet keyboards, but at least Lenovo didn't cheap out and make a crappy one.
I'm hoping that I'll find what you described. Good travel and feel. Equal performance when the key is struck off-center. A tactile feel that keeps my fingers positioned and facilitates rapid typing. Keys that don't bottom out at or below the surrounding surface, forcing the user to type "into wells".
However, I still find it hard to convince myself I'll like them.
But... as you say, I'll give it a try. Before purchasing.
Remaining outstanding, my hope that they won't also follow other laptop manufacturers in introducing the "giant shelf" in front of the keyboard, and/or a sharp front edge to same. I can't stand how those press into my wrists particularly when I'm working on a surface that I cannot set to an optimal/ergonomic height (cafe table, conference room table, etc.). (And yes, I've griped about this before, as well. ;-)
But they're not bad, and I definitely don't have a problem with typing on them for extended periods of time. I've spend entire weekends using my X120e, and the keyboard was never annoying or disruptive to my typing.
If this is going to be your primary computer, I wouldn't commit until I've definitely tried them for a while. I actually spent like 30min+ typing on various demo computers at the local shop, just to get a comparable feel. They had multiple Lenovo laptops, and while yea, the big full size keyboard was great, the chiclet keyboard wasn't a problem.
Another reason I bought my X120e is Lenovo didn't skimp out on key size, whereas most netbooks would. All the keys were full size.
So do I regret my decision? No, thankfully.
Think of the X60 -> X220 transition. They took an amazing little road machine and squished the screen so far that it's pretty much useless for anything but playing movies. I certainly wouldn't want to see how many lines of code I could fit into 768 pixels, especially given how nice the X60/61 was with its proper 4:3 display.
So here we are, six years later and I'm still buying refurbished X60s off eBay to use as my dev box on the road. If they'd put out something similar today, they'd have another $2k of my money (several times over by now, in fact).
Maybe I should reconsider buying a T6★?
P.S. The T42 is the first laptop keyboard I've been comfortable with in about the last 10 years. And while my particular model is underpowered in the discrete graphics department, the display is pretty darned fine to look at -- in both dimensions.
But the bigger selling point is, the keys have curvature.
And that's important for any touch typist, and the reason I chose the X120e over every other netbook/ultrabook I tried.
Why does it sound like you think I'm insane?
I'm sitting in front of a T61 at the moment at 1280x800 and I prefer it to my 2x 22" 1600x1200 screens in the office (one of which is permanently turned off).
I have VS2010, SQL2008 Mgmt studio, Word, Excel, 2 different browsers, Outlook and 3 RDP connections open. It's fine.
Try sitting at a table in a sand-floored bar with a good thatch roof to keep light levels down, but a good view of the beach and the sea. Tonsai beach in Thailand is my personal preference, but you can probably make it work at any little beach community with good wifi and cheap bungalows to rent.
Notice how owning a 3 pound machine that you can fit comfortably into a tiny backpack suddenly seems like a much better idea. You might even wonder why you need to keep an apartment back home capable of containing a 30" monitor. For the same rent payments, you could just stay here indefinitely.
Naturally, if you don't have a beach to use it from, the tiny road machine makes somewhat less sense. Good thing that, as developers, we're in of of the few professions where we get to choose whether to add that beach to our dev setup.
in particular, with intellij idea, i feel like i have hit a sweet spot matching the layout to the screen - i have the project tree / leiningen / find window on the left, source in the middle, and run / repl / debug on the right. it works really well in the x220 window shape.
that doesn't mean i don't wish the screen were bigger / squarer. i preferred my old x60 and i am very concerned about the keyboard - the keys are the best thing by far on this.
Here probably a picture of the X230 [2]
[1] http://blog.lenovo.com/design/thinkpad-x1-designing-the-ulti...
[2] http://images.tweaktown.com/news/2/3/23890_09_spotted_lenovo...
I can deal with a change in the mechanics (oh how I miss the 300 series but I adapted to that change) but mess with the layout and I'm gone. Probably to a Mac running Linux (though trackpoint might just keep me on Thinkpad/Sony/Dell for now).
Edit addendum: If I were to go through the pain of adapting to a new laptop keyboard layout (maybe even abandoning the trackpoint), whose ought I to choose and why? I'm assuming that ${vendor} support a big enough range that mere technology features aren't relevant :-)
If so, I have it on the computer I'm using to type this--a Lenovo X200s from 3+ years ago. (Still waiting for Lenovo to figure out how to cram 1440x900 into a 12" screen like they did on this laptop.) I vastly prefer this keyboard to my fiance's Macbook Air.
However, if the keyboard is the same as the one I have on my 3-year-old Lenovo, I'm not sure why this is "news".