ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence
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- Nub pointer? I love it. Full mouse control without moving my hands significantly away from where they were on the keyboard anyways. My X220 has a trackpad, but I only use it by accident.
- An LED that lives above the monitor and has a shield that points it down to light up the keyboard. This is a lifesaver on long flights.
- Docking stations. I've got two USB drives, a pair of headphones, a few USB-powered accessories, two monitors, a mouse, and a keyboard plugged into my computer when it's at the office. My MBP-toting coworkers have to connect and disconnect all that when they pick up their computer; I press the big undock button and it all stays where I left it, and reconnects when I put it back on the desk.
- Accessory comparability. I've still got the power adapters from the first ThinkPad I had. They work fine on my current one, and mean that I have more of these bricks than I could ever need - so I can keep one at work, in my go bag, at my home office, in my living room, in my kitchen, and still have a few backups around.
- Repair manuals. Want to know how to do any type of repair on your ThinkPad? The repair manual is freely available, and tells you exactly how to do anything you'd like to. To swap out the network adapter, for example, involves taking off the keyboard and going from the top.
Was ordering it in the first place a pleasant experience? No. The website sucked, I had to call in to do half the customization I wanted, and it still took two months to get here.
I'm with you about being less than thrilled with the transition to 16:9 displays, though.
Interestingly enough, Lenovo is aware of the problem; I remember reading a blog post a while ago in which someone from Lenovo said the problem is with volume: since the vast majority of uses for displays are now 16:9, it's more expensive to get square-er displays. The person speculated that, if they had 10,000 paid pre-orders or something like that, then Lenovo could seriously consider offering a different size. But it's just not feasible right now given the market for displays.
(If anyone remembers the post and can find it, post it!)
I agree with all your points. The bricks are pretty much universally interchangeable, except for W models (powerful workstation series, they have a large heavy brick with a higher current rating, which you cannot use with other series).
Repair manuals are fantastic. Two weeks ago the fan in my mother's T500 has become noisy. The laptop had been running non-stop for 3 years and the fan needed more lubrication. Using a repair manual that I downloaded from lenovo.com, I could do this in an afternoon, having had no prior experience of opening up (let alone fixing) a laptop of any kind (although I do have an experience of building my own desktops).
The knob and the thinklight are the best things since sliced bread.
BTW, you can turn off the trackpad completely in the BIOS setup utility. That's what I did on my X220 :)
For one, I do 80% of extended work sessions when I'm at one of two desks. At both those desks, I've got an aforementioned docking station sitting there, and plugged into each docking station is a pair of beautiful Dell 24" IPS panels. That's more screen real estate, and in a more organized and usable way, that I'll get on an MBP Retina. If I did most of my work without these external displays/setups I may feel differently, but for now, they come with my main use-cases.
When I'm not at one of those two desks, would a Retina display be nicer than what I've got? Sure. But I wouldn't trade it for the control nub, the user-fixability, the ability to send a hundred bucks to Crucial and get 16GB of RAM at a time of my choosing or order a second battery if I'm going to be off the grid for a weekend, the docking station, or the keyboard light.
Neither machine will be the ultimate machine for every person. For the way I work, the X200 is in a league above the MBP - the better screen doesn't make up for the machine's other failings. If you work differently, your mileage may vary.
Of course, you have to be crazy enough to run the MacBook at its native resolution without scaling to reap this benefit (I am crazy in this way).
My laptop - the T420 has a 1600x900 panel on it, but colors change at every angle, and I find myself constantly having to adjust it to get the angle just perfect. And even then, it's fuzzy.
The part I relate the most with in the presentation is that ThinkPads are not trendy or flashy. No they are not, they are not gadgets or things you show off, they are functional tools that just work.
This in fact is the only reason why I look at other offers at all. Every time I need a new laptop I re-check whether I get a ThinkPad without Windows, then I look around for other offerings that do not bundle useless software; so far the ThinkPads have just been better.
First thing I do is wiping the Windows and "factory" partitions and install Linux.
I actually appreciate that modern websites are increasingly being designed for higher standards of internet bandwidth/connectivity. It's not that I think bandwidth isn't precious, but when websites can deliver beautiful content at the cost of an extra 10th of a second of loading time on a modern connection, I think it's worth it.
A four minute download time on your part implies you have some kind of dial-up connection, is there a reason why you haven't upgraded to a faster service?
A few months ago, I bought a Macbook Air and as expected, there was a world of difference in seamless integration between OS and hardware.
If a vendor such as Lenovo built a Linux-based Thinkpad with something approaching the seamless integration and quality of OSX and Macbook hardware, I would gladly pay a premium over an Apple notebook.
Ofcourse, you are not to blame since Lenovo still markets it as a ThinkPad..
Comparing and contrasting the two machines, it's shocking what a step backwards in design the T400 is.
I think everyone knows about the terrible screen already, and I'd cut Lenovo some slack but for the fact that when IBM needed better screens, they founded IDTech as a joint venture with Chi Mei. Lenovo could at least push its suppliers around a bit; I think they have the volume for it.
The audio ports of the T400 are on the front, rather than the side. This isn't much of a problem at a desk, but using it as a laptop, it means headphone plugs often interfere with the user's body or clothing. It's especially bad using the machine in a reclined position. I'd look for a pcmcia sound card or bluetooth headphones if I had to use this machine for long.
The machine is bulky for the screen size. There's nearly an inch of bezel around the left, top and bottom of the screen. The bottom seems a bit reasonable; the inverter for the backlight has to go somewhere, and placing the screen too low puts the user's hands in front of the screen in some working positions. I see no excuse for the rest of it; the 14" 4:3 T61 had the same keyboard and much less wasted space.
The USB ports are vertical. I currently have a USB 3G stick inserted, and I can't set the machine on a flat surface without risking damage because it protrudes below the base of the laptop. It's not an unusually large 3G stick; even some flash drives have this problem.
I haven't spent any time with the newest Thinkpads, but models from a couple generations ago are shockingly worse than their immediate predecessors. Incidentally, it seems to have happened about the time they dropped the IBM branding, though Lenovo owned the Thinkpad division for several generations prior to that.
My guess is that when things go great, you'll be fine, but the moment you need something out of the ordinary then Lenovo will be just as bad as Dell.
My T60p is a rock solid machine, and the T420 I have right now only improves on that. It is without a doubt the same machine, it has an unbelievable sense of identity, but it is better.
They have serious fulfillment issues.
T420: Weeks on order, canceled, resurrected, re-canceled, repeat. Took about three months for delivery.
T420: Overheated and died. Fixed under warranty.
X100e: Runs very, very hot. Expecting this to die soon.
Lesson: Get the warranty or you'll be sorry.
Another lesson: Given the cost of the warranty, there are better machines out there.
And I really really really miss my X61's keyboard any time I use the built-in one on my MBPs (oddly, my T500 seemed to have too much flex to it's keyboard, but I never bothered swapping it or anything because I hardly ever used it outside of the dock).
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a huge win in all situations is having the cooling vents on the sides rather than bottom and keyboard drain/spill tray.
A couple of times someone knocked over one of those things and it was a disaster of crawling around on the floor for 60 minutes.
I can probably service my whole ThinkPad notebook with < 30 screws and 30% of the time.
I see "aesthetic" as a subjective concept, so I don't really understand how it can have an opposite. It's a matter of opinion, and for a lot of people, the ThinkPad design has what they're looking for.
Plus, if you ask me, sturdy case, functional keyboard, docking connector and myriad of ports is a very smart design that trumps macbooks.
More important in my opinion is the functional design, which Thinkpads really excel at.
http://www.eurotech.cz/image/file/361/x60_2.jpg
But when I see this, I get an urge to touch the keyboard, run the shell, fire up the editor... No other laptop makes me want to do this just with its looks.
And that's what I think good industrial design is about.
Bringing chiclet-style keyboards back into vogue (to the point where even Lenovo now puts them on Thinkpads) shows a complete disregard for the functionality of the laptop as a computer. Try comparing the new apple-style chiclet keys, to "skateboard-ramp" shaped keys (an "innovation" introduced by IBM to save costs), to the spherical shaped keys (http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/?page_id=1458#shapes) of high-end keyboards from the 1980s and you will see how far computer keyboards have actually degenerated. This isn't just my opinion - Kathleen Potosnak's review of literature (appears as chapter 21 in Helander's Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction) shows that shaped keys are better for typing.
There's a lot to be said about 3-button mice as well. One thing I do like about Macs is the touchpad on the newest ones (it took Apple a long time to make them really useful, though). Again, this is a sacrifice in terms of functionality. You can do things like https://github.com/vsedach/mouse-copy with the Thinkpad touchpoint and even the trackpad, but it's not convenient with most other trackpads (especially ones like the Mac's that don't have separate keys).
In terms of longetivity and visual design, I'm typing this on a 2004 Thinkpad T43. Nothing on this machine is broken, and despite 8 years of almost continuous use, even the keyboard labels only have a few nicks. This laptop looks as new or as old as the early 90s 386 Thinkpad we have at the hackerspace or the X230 my friend bought a few months ago. It wasn't until the PowerBook that Apple hit on a design with any sort of longetivity. Besides Apple and IBM/Lenovo, there's no one making laptops with a lasting design across many product generations.
As far as the actual mechanism of the keyboards, almost all laptops (including Macbooks and Thinkpads) have used the same scissor-switch mechanisms for about the last decade.
I don't know what you are talking about--you are WAY overstating your case. My 11-inch MacBook Air is by the far the most ergonomic and pleasant-to-use laptop computer I have ever owned. The keyboard on it is by far the best laptop keyboard I have ever used, and the trackpad is revolutionarily wonderful compared to any other trackpad I have ever used.
That being said, I do prefer Thinkpad-style nubs to trackpads. Also, I find Thinkpads to be beautiful, not ugly. Also, I would agree that Apple does at times make unfortunate ergonomic decisions, like the lamentable and fortunately short-lived round mouse of a decade ago, and Apple's current laptop-style keyboard for desktop computers is a bit questionable. This doesn't bother me, personally, as I use a Kinesis keyboard anyway. Also, since Apple's laptop keyboards are so good, I think they actually might be better than most desktop keyboards anyway.
I don't find Apple to be any worse in the regard of form-over-function than another other company. The ergonomic improvements that they've brought in recent years far offset any ergonomic harm that they have done. One thing that Apple did get right with it's desktop keyboard is a return to small keyboards rather than the monstrosities that the industry has been foisting on us for the last few decades. The current small Apple keyboards remind me of "Happy Hacking" keyboards, which are the way that keyboards should be.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2471321
The Magic Mouse is even less comfortable. I don't know how they expect people to hold that for any significant period.
I have not used a pre-2011 Macbook, though I did have a 2006 or so PowerBook. It was fine. My only complaint was that it get too hot to use with bare legs. This is one of the reasons that Apple switched from the PowerPC to Intel.
I haven't used a Magic Mouse. The idea of mouse with a touch-sensitive top seems like a great idea. I don't know how it works out in reality. I use a Cyborg R.A.T. 9 mouse. I love it. I also sometimes use an Apple Magic Trackpad, and I think that it is fantastic.
After a bit of browsing on Wikipedia and Freescale product pages, it appears to me that the mobile G4 chips typically used under 20 watts and had TDPs around 30. That's in line with (or below) the standard-power Intel chips found in the Macbook Pro from its introduction to current Ivy Bridge models.
There was also a low-power G5 processor that could, in theory have powered a laptop. Apple didn't go that route because it wasn't substantially (if any) faster than the G4, there wasn't a suitable northbridge, and the G5's idle power consumption was too high.
It appears Apple switched to Intel because there wasn't a suitable upgrade path for its laptops, not because then-current models consumed too much power or generated too much heat.
In my opinion there is nothing more beautiful on a laptop than the thinkpads hardened steel hinges.
"Ugly", is of course, subjective, but do keep in mind that the original thinkpad line is generally considered a design classic.
Also keep in mind that thinkpads in the last decade or so have shifted a great deal design-wise from the original, losing much of the aesthetic purity along the way.
The original thinkpad was yer basic stark black monolith (all right angles, no curves or wedges to speak of) with the barest minimum of accent (the bright red nub pointer and button markers), and a lovely silky surface texture that made you want to caress it. No tacky chrome-look plastic. No touchpad to bloat up the lower surface. Just quality of materials and purity of form.
While recent thinkpads share the color scheme with the original, they've lost many of the other iconic design cues, both obvious and subtle.
So I kinda see where you're coming from if you're talking about recent models, but the original thinkpads were absolutely beautiful.