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Comment by charliesome | Hacker News Reader

Why don't manufacturers compete on quality instead?

I can walk into a store and see the Apple computers on one side and the Windows computers on the other. All the Apple computers look and feel beautiful, but the Windows computers are plastered with stickers and 'Beats by Dr Dre' branding. They're made out of what looks like the cheapest plastic ever. I can understand why Apple is absolutely killing it at the moment - it's because everything else is shit.

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Lenovo certainly does compete on quality, it just aims for a different set of quality seekers.

Apple targets people who want their computer to look pretty. Lenovo targets the people who want to get stuff done.

Want to quickly scroll through a document? page up/page down/home/end buttons? Lenovo's got it. Want to change the volume easily and still have access to f1-f12? Lenovo's got dedicated buttons for it. Spill your drink? There's a good chance your drink harmlessly poured out through holes in the bottom (damaging at most the keyboard).

Need more battery life? Buy a second battery and swap them when the first runs out. Need more ram? Just open it up and put it in. Same thing if you want a new HD/etc.

Combine this with great linux support [1] and Lenovo is a clear win for me.

[1] At work we have macbook pros, getting it to work with linux was a disaster.

  > Apple targets people who want their computer to look pretty. 
  > Lenovo targets the people who want to get stuff done.

I'm no Apple fanboy, but this statement's ridiculous.

  > Want to quickly scroll through a document? page up/page down/home/end buttons? Lenovo's got it.

Two-finger inertial scrolling on the amazing glass trackpad. Or, Command-arrow keys. Same effect. Not one-button, but it's not like the functionality isn't there.

  > Want to change the volume easily and still have access to f1-f12? Lenovo's got dedicated buttons for it.

Macbooks have a "fn" key that can be held to modify the function key behaviors, and the unmodified behavior is a Mac OS X Preference option.

  > Need more battery life? Buy a second battery and swap them when the first runs out.
  > Need more ram? Just open it up and put it in. Same thing if you want a new HD/etc.

I feel the need to point out that these are completely valid arguments against the new Macbooks.

I have a Late 2008 Macbook Pro, the first unibody they made, and the only reason it still runs strong is because I've swapped the battery, RAM, and HDD (now an SSD). I love the new Retina Display Macbooks, but I don't know if I can put that kind of money down on a computer that isn't upgradeable. Not when it's my primary mode of earning a living.

I wasn't claiming a macbook can't scroll. I was just claiming that Lenovo has a lot of features that don't necessarily look pretty, but which make it easy to actually use the damn thing on an everyday basis.

Fewer buttons isn't necessarily better nor is it even simpler. The simplest thing in the world is a "do exactly what I want" button for every common value of "what I want". It's not pretty or as easy to market or as pretty, but it's highly usable.

(I'll skip the rant about my iPhone, and how it forces me to waste screen real estate on buttons that come built into Android.)

The only time I've ever used a function key (F1, F2) in a Mac application was in Photoshop. Most Mac applications use Cmd+? shortcuts. So in effect, the volume/brightness controls have their own dedicated keys.

I use all 12 of them on a regular basis, except for F2. I just noticed F2 is free, so I bound it to 'revert-buffer, which I use all the time.

A single button works great for a gun. A computer does more things than a gun so it needs more buttons.

Fair enough. Upon investigation, I've discovered there are a fair few OS X official system shortcuts which utilize function keys.

But I think you're an edge case. Apple targets hard the average consumer, and there are plenty (my parents) who don't understand an arbitrary mapping of a number to a function. The self-explanatory icons (the speaker with lots of sound vs no sound, the universal play triangle, etc.) are far more understandable. So why not save space?

Yes, I'm an edge case. I seek out a quality laptop that I can get work done on. That's what we are discussing, no?

As for "saving space", huh? A thinkpad is the same size as a macbook - both are as wide as their screen plus a little extra. The thinkpad is just covered with ugly buttons instead of pretty metallic empty space.

Yes, but you're far more proficient. Those who plug away happily at 30WPM will not share your definition of quality.

I'll take a beautiful product that sacrifices minor functionality (in my case) for aesthetics. My point is not that a MacBook is right for you, but that Apple seems to have rightly assumed that most people don't care about the function keys, and spared the ugly buttons.

In any case, you're probably saving a grand every time you buy a laptop, so maybe the joke's on us.

Yep, as I said upthread: "Apple targets people who want their computer to look pretty. Lenovo targets the people who want to get stuff done."

I agree, fewer buttons does not necessarily make a device simpler. There's a happy medium that I think Android hit with the four-button menu/home/back/search keys. Whenever I use an iPhone anymore I always cache-miss and try to find the hardware back button.

Not every screen needs a back button. You can't hide a hardware back button.

I'm with Apple on this one. The back-arrow button in the toolbar reminds me I'm in a hierarchal app, and the label reminds me what the prior screen was. It's just the opposite for me: every time I use an Android I hunt around the screen for the software back button.

As the hardware buttons are generally lit, you could de-emphasise it by removing the light. I had a Motorola java phone which did just this.

The failure of the Apple hierarchical model is it's app-centric, unlike Android which is activity-centric. In a perfect world we could have software back buttons which worked like Android, but I wouldn't trust developers to implement that consistently.

If there is no place to go back to (i.e., you just opened the app), back takes you to the home screen.

Besides, just as you can't hide a hardware back button, you can't hide the wasted space sitting to the left and right the iPhone's "go home or randomly open Siri" button.

No but you can hide an OS-level software back button, like in any Android 4 phone that doesn't have hardware buttons.

Though I'm not familiar with the Lenovo trackpads in particular beyond playing with them on display models, the trackpad on MacBooks is a huge differentiator over any of the ones I've had on PC laptops. It works so well you forget how well it's working until you start using a different computer with a trackpad that now feels completely broken.

It's honestly one of the reasons I'm still contemplating getting a new Mac when it's time to upgrade. I've never seen a PC laptop with both a comfortable, large, smooth trackpad and good drivers that provide the kind of scrolling you get with a Mac.

As a Thinkpad user/owner, I don't use a trackpad and do not see a point using a trackpad, when I have trackpoint.

I have the trackpad permamently disabled, because that little red thinkgy among g, h and b keys beats it so badly, it is not even funny.

> Need more battery life? Buy a second battery and swap them when the first runs out. Need more ram? Just open it up and put it in. Same thing if you want a new HD/etc.

This is one of the biggest factors for me in getting a PC laptop over a MacBook. When I buy a ThinkPad, I intend to keep it for 5 years. My friends with MacBooks all replace them every 2-3 years.

> Combine this with great linux support [1] and Lenovo is a clear win for me.

This is another big factor. I tell anyone who's interested in Linux that the best laptop for Linux is a ThinkPad. Everything works flawlessly out of the box.

> This is another big factor. I tell anyone who's interested in Linux that the best laptop for Linux is a ThinkPad. Everything works flawlessly out of the box.

I wonder what Linus Torvalds uses as a laptop ... Oh noes !!!

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an-interview-with-millenium...

Of course, what works for the guy who invented Linux might not work for someone who just wants a download/install/everything works Linux setup.

the linux thing is not universally true.

i have installed a few different distros on my w500 over the years, and it runs hot every time. the ati drivers suck, the os can't seem to control the fans properly, and switchable graphics don't work. tried with opensuse years ago, and ubuntu a few times more recently.

i imagine it's better with a nvidia card, and no switchable graphics.

T400 here with same results - with Ubuntu (12.04) it is hotter than with W7, switchable graphics does not work (works in Intel X4500 mode).

  >  When I buy a ThinkPad, I intend to keep it for 5 years. 
  > My friends with MacBooks all replace them every 2-3 years.

Yeah that's one of the reasons I don't know if I'm comfortable getting one of the new Macbooks. I mean the Retina Display w/ 16 GB of RAM is lustworthy, but the RAM is soldered into place (thus the need to max it out at 16GB at purchase-time), the battery's glued in place, and the SSD is apparently replaceable but completely nonstandard.

But I'm confused about what to replace it with, and concerned that I'll miss some of the better OS X stuff. Keynote is fantastic for presentations. Never having to worry about hardware compatibility is pretty convenient.

"Everything works flawlessly out of the box."

It has come a long way then.

"Want to change the volume easily and still have access to f1-f12? Lenovo's got dedicated buttons for it."

In preferences, you can set it so Fn+F1 through Fn+F12 trigger the usual features, so that you can still have easy access to vanilla F1 through F12.

Take some time to dig through the preferences menu on OS X, you'll be surprised how configurable things can be.

Lenovo is awesome, except they seem to pride themselves in having the worst displays on the market. It's downright bizarre.

This is kind of a chicken/egg perception problem. The perception is that if you want to buy a "posh" computer you should get a Mac. Therefor Mac=Expensive , PC=Cheap.

This is I guess part of the reason that auto manufacturers will use different brand names for different market segments. Because it's difficult to signal "I am successful and buy nice cars" with a Skoda badge.

An example of a "high end" PC would be Alienware, which whilst they have some nice hardware they just look horrendously tacky. Basically the equivalent of sticking florescent lighting all over your Subaru.

There is also the potential patent minefield if you want to start manufacturing things that look like or use similar materials to Apple devices.

Thinkpads have great quality but I have to say I have not seen any touch pads that come anywhere close to the quality of the ones on a Mac. Luckily I prefer the Lenovo "nipple" over a touchpad but most people hate it and bringing a high quality touchpad to a PC would be a big deal IMO.

http://xkcd.com/243/

> I prefer the Lenovo "nipple" over a touchpad but most people hate it

The problem is that no one gives the TrackPoint a chance. I've seen people who've used ThinkPads for years and have never even touched the TrackPoint. But if you spend about 30 minutes working with it, you'll find that it's superior to both mice and trackpads for 99% of tasks (gaming being the one exception, for which I keep a mouse on hand).

I have to agree. While my current laptop is a Macbook (and inertial two-finger scrolling is awesome), I've been using Thinkpads for years (I actually have two for home use), and nothing beats the Trackpoint. It's fast and efficient, and you don't have to pull you hands away from the keyboard to perform mouse operations. For what it's worth, I even disable the trackpad on my Thinkpads and only use the Trackpoint.

Same here, the first thing I did when I got my ThinkPad was to go into the BIOS settings and disable the trackpad. There's absolutely no need for it once you've gotten used to the TrackPoint.

I find that the nipple requires a little too much pressure (T500), which is a little tiresome. You can be really light to the touch with some touchpads (including simulated clicks.) I'd prefer a nipple more like a touchpad - something like you get on the Blackberries (not the old trackballs.)

I run Kubuntu on a W500 and set mouse sensitivity way up:

     xset m 5 1

so that I can move the cursor with a fairly light touch.

You can change the sensitivity in the settings (and of course, there's the usual mouse-speed setting as well).

That said, I have found that some of the newer models have much more sensitive trackpoints than my T60.

Edit: Changing the cap can be useful as well. The concave tip in particular.

I've tried playing around with the trackpoint speed under Xfce, and it doesn't help that much. The pressure needed although not much, is enough to put stress on my upper body.

You can tweak the pressure and speed

Hah, when I was a kid, I played an fps game using the nipple. It seems impossible, but after a while you do get used to it.

But my fingers did hurt a lot after playing for a few days, so I wouldn't recommend it :)

From what I see they do differentiate on quality. There's a huge range of android devices and they are going to stand out in any way they can -- software is just one more way of doing that.

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