Hacker News Reader

Comment by acabal | Hacker News Reader

Very nice. My only wish now would be to include a full keyboard (with pgup, pgdown, home, del in their own row). That's what's stopping me from buying it, and the X1 Carbon too. I've said it before and I'll say it again, for a laptop aimed at developers it's really surprising they decided to copy Apple and ditch those super-important keys.

It's extra surprising when you note that laptops like the Lenovo Yoga 13, which is aimed at consumers and not developers, managed to fit a full keyboard in the same (slightly smaller?!) form factor.

I'd pay a fortune for a 14 inch, IPS laptop with a full keyboard. Seriously, a fortune. I spend so much time at my laptop that I'm more than willing to invest in quality.

View on HN

> My only wish now would be to include a full keyboard (with pgup, pgdown, home, del in their own row)

Curious, why do you prefer them in their own row? I look explicitly for keyboards with them overlaid onto the arrow keys, so I don't need to move my hands (just use the fn key) to navigate text.

I do a lot of navigation and reading via keyboard, and being able to drift my right hand over and press pgup, pgdown, home, end to navigate documents is much more convenient than trying to contort my already-achy left pinky to find the fn key (and maybe miss it for ctrl or super), or worse, having to move my left hand away from home to press fn with my index finger.

In general I think a lot of programmers including myself map their keyboards in unique and complicated ways. There's no reason to have fewer keys when you can have more, especially considering how others like the Lenovo Yoga have managed to fit more keys in the same space and still maintain the island layout.

I frequently use modified versions of those keys, such as ctrl-home/ctrl-end to go to the beginning/end of the document or text area, or ctrl-shift-home/ctrl-shift-end to select to the beginning/end. That's already two or three modifier keys; I don't want to make that three or four.

Not having to push a modifier (fn) is the big winner for me, plus having slightly bigger buttons for things like the arrows.

almost all apps: apple trackpad scrolling, with awesome speed sensitivity (even a less pager inside a terminal in a linux VM.)

that one app (nano - don't judge me, I use GUI editors for programming): has its own shortcuts (Ctrl+V for pgdown and Ctrl+Y for pgup.)

On the other hand, don't get me started on OS X home/end keys...

I too do prefer them layered over the arrow keys. But, hey, I'm an Emacs junkie, so, I love modifier keys :D

I'd love to know more on why you said Lenovo Yoga 13 is aimed for consumers. I'm a python coder myself and I'll be getting this convertible ultrabook in the next few weeks. I've come across videos and site reviews but never heard that this laptop is more for consumers than developers.

I think the assertion may be that it's an IdeaPad and not a ThinkPad, lending to the consumer train of thought. I haven't ever heard good things about IdeaPad in the past, while the ThinkPad line seems to do a good job of maintaining core values of build quality and ruggedness. I'm not sure Lenovo did much for trying to carry over that line of thinking into the Idea lineup...

Maybe that has changed, but I'd have a hard time pulling the trigger on anything within that line unless I could use it first.

My reasoning was that it's the in the IdeaPad line, and that the whole tablet-conversion gimmick is more oriented towards iPad-style media consumption than productivity.

Actually I was really close to buying one myself as a dev machine--it has an IPS screen, a full keyboard, and the tablet thing is a nice, if not strictly needed, bonus. My deal-breaker was no backlit keyboard, because I work a lot at night, and that the wifi card has zero Linux support (as in, you have to connect to ethernet to download the wifi drivers first).

To a lesser extent I would have preferred a 14-inch screen and dedicated graphics, but I was willing to live without those because the Yoga was so nice otherwise.

Will there ever be a perfect machine?! :)

I agree about the 14 inch. I currently use a 13.3" with a keyboard to die for, but I've found that 13.3" is a little too small, and 15+" is too big. Finding a replacement is a royal pain.

Dream setup:

14" screen- 1920x1080 IPS

Full keyboard with ThinkPad-style keys (none of that flat crap)

GPU capable of OpenCL, latest OpenGL and WebGL

2.4+ GHz CPU

5-6 hours battery life

<4 lbs (preferably <3)

Complete driver support for Linux (and preferably FreeBSD as well)

I don't think this is too much to ask, and I'm willing to pay...

"But it only costs the price of learning a new keyboard shortcut," the easily dismissed voice from the Internet whispers, "easier to press than a non-homerow key..."

"A keyboard shortcut involves pressing at least two keys" mumbles the voice of the veteran, "those four keys were invented for a reason (try multi-tapping your shortcut, as is common with pgup/pgdown)..."

I get what you're saying, but I use those keys to navigate so often that constantly contorting my pinky to reach fn is going to wreck my wrist. With the keys on their own row I can drift my right hand over and comfortably scroll through long documents with one hand, and without having to constantly be aiming for and possibly missing a modifier key. (And possibly fat-fingering the arrow keys because they're so tiny on this model.)

Plus, some people (me) are comfortable with their keyboard layout and shortcuts and don't want to be forced to change their typing habits for no significant gain, when the alternative (full row) is entirely possible and in fact present in similarly-sized laptops like the Yoga.

I ask myself, "Why would Dell change their keyboard like that, given literally all their other laptop models are otherwise?" and the only answer I can think of is, "To look more like Apple." That's not a great reason.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com