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Comment by old-gregg | Hacker News Reader

Fuck that. The UltraNav is gone. Looks like I won't have the 3 trackpad buttons under my thumbs on the next gen. No more opening links in a new tab with a single button click. Ughh. I guess people just don't want to pay for nice things anymore...

The previous generation of Thinkpads lost their IPS displays and switched to el-cheapo "short screens", the current generation of Thinkpads lost the proper keyboard and switched to shitty chiclet style calculator keyboards, and the next one is going to lose the UltraNav.

Consumerization of computers sucks. They used to be tools for professionals, now everyone is optimizing for disposable facebook terminals. I hope that at some point the tablets and phones are going to completely take over the consumer market and someone will start making usable laptops again.

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> No more opening links in a new tab with a single button click. Ughh.

Sounds like they have virtual buttons to support the old functionality http://www.thinkscopes.com/thinkpad-buttonless-trackpoint/

I know the Windows drivers for this stuff is lacking, but on my MacBook, touch gestures have made my mousing way more productive than my old multi-button mice did (even with all the chording and stuff). Three-finger tap to open in new tab, swipes for back and forth and switch tabs, virtual monitors, etc. And a large trackpad that takes the space where buttons used to be makes that possible.

Gestures are one thing, but I've got a laptop now that has "virtual buttons" on a trackpad (the trackpad even physically clicks down) and it's excessively annoying to use. I can't feel which "button" I'm pressing, so mistakes are made. I'd rather have a trackpoint + 3 hardware buttons any day.

I hear you. I've been stocking up on T61's for a bit now. I have 6 now. It might sound crazy, but its the last well-built machine I've found which is open and not full of shitty hardware or odd screws. I can strip one with a Swiss army knife.

Considering I still use a 75MHz ARM (HP50g) for a lot of things, I don't think the rapid progression of computing will serve me in the future well so I'm happy with one of them and FreeBSD for the next 20 years+.

Second hand T61s seem to be weirdly cheap. Is that because there's a glut from businesses selling them and moving to tablets?

Nothing to do with tablets - no one really cares about them in business. You just don't see them other than in the hands of a few purposeless executives. I visit hundreds of medium-large enterprises and they just aren't any.

The moment the warranty runs out, they buy T4xx series ones instead and throw the others at resellers in bulk. This is all scheduled alongside windows upgrades. The motivation to get rid of the T61's coincided with Windows 7 upgrades (the T61's nearly all shipped with Vista).

I've seen a pallet with 500 T61's on it being carted away from a large insurance company for these reasons.

T61s are cheap, but the ones with the 1600x1200 screens aren't, unfortunately.

I always thought I'd never buy another non-thinkpad due to the workflow of using the trackpoint + trackpoint buttons (ultranav). Who knows now with the way things are going. Seems odd to get rid of your distinctive features, I'd much rather they just removed the trackpad all together.

Since IBM sold the Thinkpad unit, quality has been downhill. :(

That'd be an obvious assumption to make, but I've been using both IBM and Lenovo versions and I frankly don't see much of a difference. Any concrete examples?

The T410 keyboard from my current model against my old T43.

The screen quality of some T420 here in office.

I disgree. I think they've changed but IBM would have probably followed the same path.

The same staff are designing the ThinkPads apparently.

Maybe in terms of general design towards thinness, but I don't think IBM would have yielded to the display manufacturers when it comes to the aspect ratio of the screens.

I think they would as software is moving towards width over height these days. All my T61's are 16:9 and I'm happy with that.

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