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Comment by josephkern | Hacker News Reader

Thinkpad. Great build quality, Linux friendly.

I've been watching Thinkpads very closely. I used to own X40 until it broke and before 600x (which never broke, but it's kind of old now).

What model is preferable nowadays? There are not lots of shops to test them at least in Berlin. I want 13" and lightweight, but still powerful enough laptop. Lots of ram, i7 CPU and a SSD disk. The most important thing is an excellent keyboard and touchpad. I heard Lenovo is not using the old and excellent keyboard in their laptops anymore and I haven't tested the new one yet.

Don't take the t series. Lenovo basically transformed this to pure trash. The only thinkpad series that lives up to ibms quality is the x series. Truthfully I wouldn't by thinkpads anymore. The only notebook you can by nowadays is the MBA.

Counter-anecdote: I have a T520 and I'm perfectly happy with it. Get the full HD screen, it's worth it. I admit that I'd prefer the old 4:3 screen size, but that's just not the way of the world anymore.

I agree that quality has declined somewhat under Lenovo, but the old T43 was a goddamn tank. I've got one hooked up to my tv for streaming - it puts out full 1080 with DVI if you get the dock. I think it was also north of $2k when new.

So, no, the current t520 is not as well engineered as those old ones, but it's still better than the vast majority of its peers. And you get some great deals on refurbs and open boxes on outlet.lenovo.com.

Current MBA is only 4gb ram. That's a deal breaker for me.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon (which is their answer to the MacBook Air - similar size to the 13", but 14" with more horizontal resolution), or the 12.5" X230, which is a bit heavier, but has 60WHr+ battery options and IPS display (both missing from the MacBook Air).

How is that keyboard and touchpad? Looks really nice, but it's available in Europe in a few weeks. I must test the keyboard before making my choice...

Haven't tried it yet, but it's a risky departure from the previous long-standing design (and it applies to all of their models being released this year - i.e. the previous 7-row layout is history). They seem to be taking the redesign seriously though - some more information on their blog: http://blog.lenovo.com/design/thinkpad-x1-designing-the-ulti...

My worry is that they've moved the page/up down keys quite illogically down next to the arrow keys. It just doesn't map right mentally - moving pages up/down shouldn't have to involve clicking keys either side of the arrow keys:

http://allthingsd.com/files/2012/05/Lenovo_tablet_X230t_stan...

Not too happy about the home/end keys for similar reasons.

Making the keys more ergonomic is fine but it seems there really was no incentive for them to change the layout to a 6-row one other than arbitrary stylistic reasons.

That all said, it's probably still the best notebook keyboard on the market. I have a MacBook here and feel/tactility of the keys is superior on my old 2010 ThinkPad (if only just - they're both great keyboards) - on the new models, layout issues asides, it's supposed to be even better.

The guy doing this review was only able to get 3.5 - 4 hours out of the battery. http://www.nomobile.ru/reviews/162216.html Mediocre horizontal screen resolution for a 14" too

1600x900 on 14" is mediocre? Bear in mind that it's exactly the same size/weight as the 13" MacBook Air but has larger display (thanks to a narrower bezel on the sides), higher resolution, and an arguably better keyboard. Shame about the battery life, though. Also, considering they're using a carbon fibre shell, they should have been able to get the weight down to considerably less than that of the Aluminium MacBook Air. Sony got that part right with their own carbon fibre VAIO Z (lighter and with better display than either), but it has worse ergonomics than either the ThinkPad or the Air.

No product out there at the moment that gets everything right. The MacBook Air probably comes closest, although the battery life and TN+ display could both be substantially improved.

Note that the ThinkPad X220/X230 has both a better, IPS, display and can run for 12+ hours using a 9-cell battery whilst still weighing less than a 13" MacBook Pro. However, it's heavier than the newer slimmer notebooks and has lower resolution:

http://blog.laptopmag.com/record-breaker-lenovo-thinkpad-x22...

I've had a love affair with the x200's for the last few years, x200, x220, and the x230. They are all very competent machines. I'm currently using a x200 with an SSD running linux as my primary machine.

Depends. I have a X41, which gets flakey with the headphone jack when you put the laptop to sleep (requires a reboot to get it working again). Other than that, I can't remember having any issues with it.

One of the nice things about it was that the volume / brightness hotkeys were hooked into the BIOS so I could use them even when the OS was locked. I believe all ThinkPads are like this. I miss this on my current laptop.

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