What is up with Lenovo?

I am really getting fed up with each successive new x-series destroying the keyboard. How can a 12.5 inch x220 have a perfect keyboard with all the regular keys and yet on a 14 inch X1 they somehow need to start getting rid of things like cap locks and function keys????

Take the x220, stretch it by 1.5 inches- allow me to have 2 RAM slots, add the new display like you have done and voila! Happy days.

I cannot believe the 14 inch X1 Carbon Gen 2 is still stuck with 8GB of RAM?!?!?

 

cap lock isn't that important and you can double tap shift to get cap lock. They atleast put home/end there. The problem is the function keys. 8GB of RAM isn't bad but they could have atleast give 16GB as an option.

 

To you, it's not. There are professions where a separate Caps Lock key is a must.

8GB RAM was a respectable cap in the days of X61 some 6-7 years ago...nowadays it's nothing short of a joke.

Come to think of it, the entire keyboard layout of the new X1C is a joke as well. Not a particularly good one at that.

 

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I think the idea is that most ultrabook users aren't going to be using their laptops for RAM-intensive tasks. They're really going for portability with this one.

 

This makes the case for diminishing returns in terms of portability. Being obsessed with shaving off millimetres leads to breaking the balance between power and mobility.

 

Wow! Lenovo X1 has beaten Acer S7 in the competition for the most ridiculous keyboard layout ever made. By a wide margin too. 5 rows! No CapsLock, with Home/End on its place! Backspace is not the right-most key on the keyboard now, trailed by Delete! Esc is small again, but \ is super-wide!

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2014/01/New-X1-Carbon-Touch_Hero_03-660x606.jpg

 

Just get a T440s. Easy.

 

Lenovo in the past few years has:

Made batteries filled with air; make laptops with ginormous bezels; gotten rid of my 7 row keyboard. Any more changes to ThinkPad, and I won't be able to recommend Lenovo at all.

 

It'll be interesting to see how Lenovo's corporate sales are doing as it dumbs down the T and X series machines. The impression I get is that Lenovo is going for growth on the back of consumer sales rather than business sales. That new X1 Carbon looks way too gimmicky - an example IMO of Lenovo making too many compromises just to be able to brag about its record thinness.

I understand consumers are fickle and WinPC makers face stiff competition, but why do we have to constantly see all these new gimmicks year after year instead of solid, reliable machines? Surely if Lenovo wanted to compete with Apple it might have noticed that Apple's MacBooks have the same proven and solid design year after year, which is a big part of their appeal.

 

I'm not an expert, but imho it's all about money. Reduce cost as much possible, without playing safe.

I think they never listen thinkpad users. Remember how many issues we've seen these past years? Keyboard flex, cpu whine and/or throttle, keyboard layout change(new trackpoint, numpad), ips screen bleed. And a terrible customer service on top of that.

To me they've become just another pc/laptop company, nothing legendary anymore, their legacy will be butchering Thinkpad brand.

 

And if only they could design a powerful gaming laptop with the trackpoint... that would be such a good move, for me at least. I can't ever think of going back to using a trackpad and don't want to have to bring a mouse with me all the time!

 

Well Lenovo is doing something right, it's #1 global PC seller. Like I said, I'm from old school ThinkPads (I despise IBM designed ones). If Lenovo went back to T60/T61 era ThinkPads, that's when they were making the best.

If Lenovo made ThinkPads like they did 6 years ago, I would happily pay 2k for one. Like I said, my X260t with ULV i5/i7 Broadwell, 256-512 GB mSATA only (get rid of 2.5" completely), 8-16 GB RAM (even solder it I don't care), make it MBA thin, QHD+ 3k outdoor screen, Intel 6000 iGPU, GOOD battery/slice/dock options, I'd happily pay 2000-2500 for such spec.

 

Massive motherboard failures is the best of an era? OK, I realize this was an Nvidia issue, but I have to say my T60 was a complete pile It wasn't just the motherboard, or the 3 fans that stopped working, or the 3 keyboard replacements, or the dim screen... It was just always doing weird stuff when it *was* working (not waking from sleep etc). I spent as much time working ON the computer as I did working with it. Maybe I just had bad luck...

Bottom line though, if those perpetually whining about the days of the "real Thinkpad" were involved in designing, producing and distributing the product, the only Thinkpad left to buy would used on Ebay, as the company would have long been out of business (where it was headed when Lenovo bought them). The 10 people on the internet dreaming of a Broadwell-equiped T41 would be pleased, and >99% of actual customers would be buying something else.

Personally, I'm glad for the changes. I'm completely happy with my X230 but I could see myself considering an X1 a year from now after they sort out all of the various new introduction bugs....

"What's up with Lenovo?" I'm guessing that they're trying to stay and business and be profitable, and they seem to be doing an OK job of it so far.

 

I am fed up of these ridiculous high prices for mediocre specs

 

kinda agree. Having gone through a whole range of Thinkpads for the last 12+ years I agree that some people have a very selective memory (or no experience) of the "good old" Thinkpads. About the only models I used that I recall ever seeing the vast majority of people like were the T2x series (the first of the modern T-series) and maybe the T40. All the others were met with about the same number of gripes and complaints as this latest range. There's a reason Thinkpads used to be mocked as "Stinkpads"! They might have had a tough exterior, but the hardware very often fell short (and went wrong) and IBM was usually far behind the cutting edge in terms of components it offered.

I do not recall having a huge number of problems with my T61, but I did prefer it to the T400 that came after mainly because I snagged one of the rare machines with a 4:3 screen. IMO the T43 marked the beginning of the end of being able to knock an intruder unconcious with your Thinkpad then get right back to work The X-series I have less experience with... apart, that is, from the MoBo overheating/failure problem of the X201s

Well, lenovo did say it would compete with Apple... apparently on overpricing, too Unlike Apple, however, Lenovo usually offers some pretty nice discounts on even new models. I bought my T440p a month after its release for 22% off list price, for example.

 

I think you mean the Lenovo designed machines, no? I thought my X220i and the other more recent ThinkPads I've seen were pretty solid, not that different than the old one. Had Lenovo stuck with the old trackpoint setup, I probably would have got one instead of a Dell.

While you're willing to spend that kind of money, I'd say it's a small market for PCs.

 

I find it hard to like the changes when they are random and affect the most conservative, laptop-defining, parts of the device. Processors, screens, storage types, latches, materials, touchscreen/not touchscreen, even touchpad/trackpoint, are all volatile. But the built-in physical keyboard is the most important part of the laptop. So important, in fact, that people are willing to double a comparable tablet's bulk and weight, just to get one.

OK, the "old school" 7 rows layout is no more, nobody needs it except 3 dinosaurs with beards, island keyboard as of xx30 series is the way to future, "we have spent endless hours designing and improving the new Thinkpad keyboard", ... . Fine.

Do people press PrintScreen often enough, so it needs to be positioned next to spacebar (like in xx30 series and previous X1)? Or people don't need it at all, so this space is better used for ~/' key? Home/End below Tab? Really? Why there? Because of popular demand, and millions of people much prefer pressing these keys with their left hands? Etc. etc.

This is just thoughtless madness. Designed by a committee of iPad users, no doubt, as no single person could be insane enough to approve this. And it's not like X1 is a 8" device, requiring some "innovation" in the layout, it's a 14"! 16:9 screen laptop, which has more than enough space to put a NORMAL, ISO standard, keyboard into it. And then still have space to put context-specific, multimedia, macro, whatever, keys around it, for "innovation" purposes.

 

I seriously doubt people use *either* of those keys with any regularity, and positioning it next to the space bar hardly suggests importance; from an ergonomic standpoint that's not a particularly easy key to hit under normal circumstances. So, I question the basic premise of the question. Honestly, print screen seems like it would be more sensibly grouped in the capacitive function keys. Regardless, I use it so infrequently that it's not the end of the world if I need to spend a few seconds to figure out its location.

There's no ISO standard of which I'm aware for the print screen key. Yes, the accent and tilde key has been moved to a non-traditional location. While you may think this is "thoughtless madness", it makes perfect sense to me. I actually use the escape key, probably several hundred more times than the tilde key, so having it a bit easier to hit makes a lot sense to me. As I said, I think the changes make sense.

Is there something which you really feel will inhibit your productivity? How will the changes specifically impact you? This isn't a trolling question, I'm truly serious. Basically, I'm just trying to figure out if there's a real objection to the keyboard function, besides the fact that it's different.

 

Meanwhile, at Lenovo's Special Bureau for Online Propaganda, Brain & Brand Dilution:

Which predictably led them to unsurpassed positive conclusions, since the company is obviously very customer-oriented and results-committed:

 

I'm trying very hard to think of another laptop keyboard that has the Home/End keys in the same position as the new Carbon does and am drawing a blank...

Just in case that the Mad Cow Disease is finally kicking in, would anyone care to point me in the right direction?

 

A vegetarian diet works well for that (fear of mad cow!).

I don't know if I've ever seen the position of the home/end key; but what does that matter? This is what I was getting at when I posed the question to the other poster: what exactly is the objection here, that it's a bad idea or that it's different. Home and End key use has evolved over time, particularly with the use of the track point and (gasp) touchpads. It's easier for many to navigate to home and end using those methods, since the home/end keys are out of reach. Meanwhile, caps lock is a hold-over to the days of mechanical keyboards (yes, I learned to type on one), and had some relevance in the DOS days. For the few people that still use this, is tapping the shift key twice such a hardship? Really??

I'm sorry, but producing a product that works for the majority of users seems like a laudable goal, and if it involves a few non-traditional choices and some relearning. There seems to be an innate desire to bash anything that's new when it comes to the keyboard. I mean, they aren't "copying Apple", which is the usual refrain, so now the criticism is that no one else is doing it? Um...OK...

It's not like Lenovo are trying to force Dvorak on people in the name of increased productivity. As far as I can see, they're making some small changes moving some rarely-used keys, and moving some other keys to positions which they may potentially be more useful. I honestly don't *know* if the changes will work for me, or for the majority of users, but they all look like positive changes to me.

So, I'll ask again, is there something wrong with the specific changes, besides the fact it's different?

 

We've had this conversation before...

The fact that some people don't use Caps Lock doesn't mean that others don't.

Re-learning the keyboard layout two times over within the last three generation of ThinkPads - presuming one was touch typing as well as using keyboard shortcuts to begin with - is quite a chore.

It doesn't matter to me personally. I'm out of the "new" ThinkPad game altogether.

New Carbon looks like an attractive offering in quite a few respects. But the keyboard layout makes zero sense, even if one has never used a ThinkPad keyboard in their life and is coming from an entirely different lineup, be it Mac, Dell, HP or Panasonic.

 

Sorry to be persistence, but I'm not going to let that go. It's not that no one uses Caps Lock, it's about building a machine that suits the majority of users (at least if you want to stay in business). That that some people use it isn't the issue, particularly since it's use is still readily accessible. I'm sure that some people preferred that ridiculous set-up where page back and forward where in the page up/back location (I can't tell you how much work I lost in those days!). Fortunately, they changed it, because it made sense for the majority of users. Keen an element of design intact because some people use it while disregarding how the majority of users behave seems like a quick road to going out of business.

I do disagree that the layout makes zero sense, though. Every singe change looks like an improvement to me. Ultimately though, the truth will be told in sales, not posts on an internet forum. I'm certainly willing to be wrong, but I bet the new X1 sells well.

 

How did Lenovo come to the conclusion that a Home/End key combo in the place of Caps Lock makes sense to a majority of users, since no one has ever seen that key in the aforementioned location before this layout as far as I can tell?

We'll see. There's a lot of competition in the 14" ultrabook segment of the market.

 

IMO the problem is that Lenovo is forcing users to rethink how they've always used a keyboard, and for what reason? I'd be interested to see the results of any focus groups (if indeed they used any). I don't see any other manufacturers rushing to redesign keyboard layouts. It just smacks of a half-baked gimmick to try and differentiate one machine from the rest of the me-too crowd.

Some people might find the new layout better after a learning curve, but as a writer I tend to use caps lock far more than I use the Home and End keys (and I rarely use Caps Lock!). I find the double-tap-shift-for-caps-lock method on tablets a pain, so I'm sure it'll be twice as annoying on a real keyboard. And what happens when you use the One Link dock to run a regular keyboard with the machine? You gotta train you brain to memorize two keyboard layouts?!

Yes, it's only a minor change and the new X1 might still sell well, but it just irks me that Lenovo is constantly tinkering around with tried and true designs. First keyboards lost a row, then discrete trackpad/point buttons disappeared, and now the X1 has some frankenboard layout.

 

Woo hoo, finally they removed the FN key

 

Agreed. Beside maybe the 6th row being capacitive and the smaller backspace key, both I will have to try out before I can say I like them or not, the layout seems improved to me. The CapsLock key was rarely used and sometimes a source of many errors, so I think it is good that it is now accessable through double-pressing Shft (there is even an CapsLock LED again, something I missed on my T440s). The Home/End keys seem to be closer to the user and bigger than before, and easier to find than on the old 6-row layout. They finally removed FN from the lower left corner and put it on top in the virtual row, which is also good, the lower left corner now looks exactly like on a standard desktop keyboard: Nice oversized Ctrl-, Windows- and Alt-keys, Ctrl sits finally in the right position.

And about the position of the Home/End keys: They are differently placed on allmost any laptop line. Some have them on the top like the current layout of ThinkPads, some of them on the right in an extra row right of the Enter key, like IdeaPads and many, many other Notebooks. The new position maybe seems strange in the first moment, but it is better then the other alternatives. The approach of "having it like on Desktop keyboards" was already lost with the step to 6-row in 2012.

I also don´t understand why it is so important to some that they still use the layout that once was defined in the times of typewriters (the position of the CapsLock key for example. CapsLock was necessary for typewriters, but it is not necessary that this function has its own key on PCs, which key is also too big and takes to much room. Maybe it is sometime the best thing to overthink some things. Just because it is standard it doesn´t necessary mean it is the best.

And in the end: The market will decide. It is just the X1 Carbon which has this new keyboard for now, Lenovo will see if it is successful or not. The X1 line appears to be their test-line to try out new things on the market, if the people like this new keyboard, we will see it on other ThinkPads, if not, then not.

 

For me that often use Home/End key, I found the new X1C key layout seems promising, but of course I have to try it first, it will be a new experience to do CTRL+Home/End with single left hand. Alternatively I think the Right-Alt (or PrtSc) & Right-Ctrl key could be replaced with Home & End keys respectively as I almost never use the Right-Alt/Ctrl keys.

I had tried the current thinkpad key layout, the Home/End keys experience still can't beat the other keyboard layout which has Home/End key position in extra right column. In thinkpad, their position is a bit too far and the keys are smaller, I often had to look at the keyboard to do CTRL+End.

 

Unless you're smart enough to transform it into your own golden niche and make this minority pay a premium.
The majority pays a regular price for whatever set of modified features they're happy with; the minority pays (much) more for not using these shiny yet crippling features; the company gets more customers makes more money; everybody is more or less happy.

Which truth are we talking about? That such and such modifications were indeed good because, look, sales were even better than expected?
This is not a satisfying line of thought because sales alone aren't exactly a satisfying metric.
You don't think that McDonald's produces objectively healthy food just because it sells billions of burgers every year, right?

To be fair, there's no reason why a company wouldn't rethink a layout. Any sort of layout. Many things exist in their current form because they have been modeled after past needs or past technology. It is not unsurprising to put habits aside and question their relevancy.
Therefore companies may and should experiment with a lot of designs... in their labs. Not directly on the back of their customers (e.g. Lenovo tinkering with a crucial part of the computer twice in three generations, as pointed by Ajkula66), and not for the sake of replacing legacy paradigms (i.e. old doesn't mean outdated).

Here lies the difference between a healthy practice and a confession of helplessness.

 

I just feel Lenovo has gone away from true business users and just appealed to the masses. They've eliminated the roll cage, got rid of the 7 row keyboard, just bad designs/getting away from what was their bread and butter years ago. Everything I liked Lenovo for back then, Lenovo has done away with. Like I said, it feels like Lenovo has completely changed. X220t is probably going to be the last X series convertible tablet I will buy, I don't want a Yoga crap or the Helix.

 

Not really true. Back in your beloved 2008 time frame, Lenovo had some models with the classic Mangesium Roll-Cage (for example, T400/T500), but also models with a Carbon Fiber Roll-Cage (X200s/X301), which were considered as "Premium" back then. This is now standard across the line, my T440s´s Display cover seems to be as robust as the one of the T400 and nearly as stiff, considering it is maybe 1/3 as thick and weights much less.

And this is also only the Display part which is made out of Carbon fiber now, the base-units Structure Frame is still Magnesium.

And they are well advised to do so, as this old "bread and butter" nearly killed Lenovo back in 2009 when the financial crisis was. If they don´t want to end like Blackberry, they can´t just stay with old designs and trust that this will be enough. This maybe is ok for some years, but at one point, you will fall behind if you don´t innovate.

Why not at least try out the ThinkPad Yoga? It seems like a solid device if I look on the reviews (for example: Review Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga Convertible - NotebookCheck.net Reviews) and the user feedback on it. Personally, I like the new hinge design much more, as the double hinges seem to be more stable than just one big twist-hinge in the middle. And if you don´t like it, there are always different options on the market, for example, Fujitsu has some nice Convertibles with the old hinge-design.

The X220/X230 Tablet design wasn´t very good either, it had many issues.

Depending on how you define "true business users". The ones Lenovo truely cares the most, large businesses, are going to Apple in large numbers, because it seems many Business-users want Consumer features. Thats where the "Consumeration" trend is coming from.

 

I use letters Z and Q not as often as I or O, but that does not mean that it's OK to put them into a weird unexpected location (for a specific locale, and Lenovo weirdly chooses to follow, for example, German vs English US layout differences). I use back tick and tilda pretty often when programming in some programming languages (e.g. Windows PowerShell and others). And I use Ctrl+Home, Shift+Ctrl+Home, Shift+End and other combinations hundreds of times daily, as they are essential for fast text editing, Web or desktop all the same.

Again, the main purpose of a mechanical keyboard, and the core of a laptop vs tablet difference, is a permanent presence of a physical keyboard, with keys in predictable locations, to be pressed w/o looking. And the purpose of all these ISO standards is that you pick another laptop, or use a desktop PC, branded Lenovo or Dell or whoever, and still can use your muscle memory. And cursor movement keys, for decades, were pressed by right hand. PrintScreen was destignated super important by Lenovo in the previous rendering of the keyboard, but now it's gone. Function keys were important, and even the space between key groups was added back to help mechanical pressing etc, and now replaced with this.

There is absolutely no sane explanation of what Lenovo has done with the keyboard, and backspace/delete, home/end keys in particular. And worse, this disaster is not unlikely to migrate down the T/W lines as well, as has happened before. What's next step? Get rid of Tab, and put Enter there?

And no, moving keys around is no "innovation", it's degradation affecting productivity. Apple, Lenovo is so keen cloning lately, chooses one layout, and sticks to it. Swapping brake and accellerator pedals in a car, and turning right by rotating the wheel counter-clockwise, wouldn't be much of improvement either, although Lenovo Innovation Committee may disagree, of course.

How Home/End keys use have evolved over time? In any editor on Windows (and Lenovos are sold with Windows), from write in Windows 3.1 to MS Office 365 Word, Home goes to the beginning of the line, Ctrl+Home to the beginning of the document, Shift+Home selects from the cursor position to the beginning of the line, same with End, etc. And it's not easy, or quick, to do any of that with trackpoint or trackpad or touch.

How tapping Shift key twice is easier to tapping one key once? Lets see. I'm accidentally pressing Shift twice. Ooops. Pressing it twice again, to turn off. All is back to normal now. Trying to Enter capital A by Shift+A. Seeing "Do you want to turn on Sticky keys" message (pressing Shift 5 times activates it). Fabulous improvement!

How any of these changes make anything "potentially more useful"?

Wow. How about Backspace? How about pressing Ctrl+Break combination (easy on 7 rows, Ctrl+Fn+B on 6 rows = not so easy, but doable with some practice with one hand)?

I wonder how people find G key on the keyboard, lost in the middle of the keyboard for ages? And Enter is completely lost too, who will ever find it so far away from Escape key? Lets make G key big, paint it pink, and put it instead of spacebar, easy to discover and use. Coming in Thinkpad X1 Carbon 2015! That will surely redefine how people use keyboards!

 

Please find me a ThinkPad - and that is any ThinkPad from any era - that we couldn't apply the same to...

False.

If we agree that no business in their right mind buys an Apple computer to run Windows on it, we just have to look at OSX vs. Windows numbers to observe that businesses are NOT moving to Apple in any significant proportion...

 

Well, they either did some mock-ups and had people test it out, or one guy in a room with a mission of pi$$ing off people on the internet decided "hey, this will be fun to mess with some people!". I realize that many on this forum believe the latter, but I'm going to go with the former. But AGAIN, forget for a second about the why and look at the actual utility of it. Caps lock is rarely used by most, as are "home/end". Thing is, they're not used for different reasons. Caps lock is rarely necessary; home/end could actually be useful, but (for most) the reach is a bit too far to hit blind. That's why I think this change "makes sense". No one has put forth a reason that they disagree, except that it's different and no one else has done it. Those aren't valid reasons in my book, and show a failure to look critically at the decision. It's a knee jerk reaction that says "it's different, so it's bad". Sorry, that's the way I see it.

Yep, no question there. There are plenty of good options out there, so I do think this is a case where the market will decide.

I have to give you credit for one of the most ridiculous analogies I've read in a long time. If you don't understand the difference, there's no explaining it to you...

 

There are hundreds of millions people (no less, all of them using desktops with 102-105-keys) who have managed to hit these for 20+ years successfully. Yet these keys have suddenly become too far to reach since last year model (when they were moved from 7th row). What has changed in the last year?

Oh, it just got a idea. Perhaps Lenovo started shipping to alien civilization, who still type in English, yet have much shorter fingers? I suppose we should see movement of 9,0,-,+, Enter keys in the next generation too, as they are obviously too far now as well? Or may be get rid of the numbers, and press them with Fn? Works on iPad, everyone in the boardroom has one, and it's very productive for entertaining during these boring committee meetings !

Anyway, we'll sure read about the ingenuity of this decision in the Lenovo's blog, how they do extensive research (by putting a rat on top of the keyboard and marking keys that the rat walks on most often), that leads to invention of a new keyboard layout every year.

 

I can't think of any issues or design flaws the X220 tablet had, please enlighten me. I owned it for a good 6 months and never had an issue with it.

Also yes, no government agency or large Fortune 500 corporation uses Macs for the normal users computers. It's all Dell Latitudes, Lenovo ThinkPads, and HP Elitebooks/Probooks. I should know, I am currently working IT for the US Food and Drug Administration.

 

1) The home and end keys have moved around since the beginning of Thinkpads. There's no "standard" location. My T41 had it on a row to the right, with end on the lower spot, if I remember correctly.

2) I seriously doubt "hundreds of millions of people" hit those keys blind. I type over 80wmp and have better dexterity than most, and I won't hit them blind. I don't believe I'm the only one who doesn't find utility in them in their current position.

3) your continued ridiculous strawmen about moving the "enter" key etc. are really tiresome. We're talking about moving keys that are seldom used*, not the space bar and enter key. You can continue with the strawman rhetoric, but it does nothing to support your position

*I don't know how they've determined that home/end/caps lock are seldom used, but Lenovo is a fairly large company with some some good resources at it's disposal. I have to imagine that they've spend some time doing some research into how people actually type, and they're trying to improve the experience for the majority of users. I know I don't use them, and I don't know anyone who regularly uses home/end blind either.

Don't like the changes? Buy something else. Mad that nothing else suits your needs? Upgrade your X20 machine (it's not like there have been a ton of improvements besides battery life w/Haswell).

 

People, particularly those using specialized software ("those who do..." etc), who use these keys (and function keys, and Insert, and their combinations with Ctrl/Shift/Alt/Windows modifiers), hit them blind, and with right hand too. More, I personally press Home/End key, and probably ~/` far more often than, say, '7' key on the keyboard. And surely do it blindly, and so does pretty much any software developer I know.

Btw. '7' a rare key in general, you would find it maybe once or twice entered by humans on this whole page, outside of this post. Same with 'Z' or 'Q'. Does it mean these keys are unnecessary, and Fn+Y would be a proper replacement for '7'?

No "research" shows radically different results every time they do it in 4 years. And the layout was changed in T400s just in 2009 - The new keyboard - A “Wow” Layout - - Design - Lenovo Blogs , then radically degraded in X1, then their 'researchers' got busy mutilating TrackPoint and only X-series suffered loss of Insert and Fn+Lock, then we got this.

I have to imagine it's little research, but one pushy too active "visionary", with different whim at different time of a day, who gets things passed through a bunch of bored and uninterested committee members, and it ends up implemented. End result = laptop keyboard is unusable for many applications, and its users must re-learn when plugging an external keyboard, or any other laptop (including any Lenovo keyboard or laptop). Lenovo needs to maintain multiple keyboards in production, including 30+ national variations, in simultaneous production. Who wins?

There was nothing wrong with the 7 rows layout. OK, there was not much space left for trackpad on 12" 16:9 X series, so they got rid of one row. Fine. But it's no excuse to put a completely random mess into 14"+ devices, especially for Backspace/Delete, ~/', Home/End etc. Apple manages just fine w/o mutilating their keyboards, and so did IBM/Lenovo for decades. People haven't changed since then either, keyboard is still used for the same purpose as it was 10 years ago.

But I do realize that some people, for the sake of the argument I guess, would regard the new coming layout (borrowed from Products - Products - Lenovo Blogs comments) as great improvement, if Lenovo implemented it. Imagine how much beautiful empty black plastic can be shown, in the place once taken by the ugly and unreliable mechanical keys!

Most Thinkpads had it the same place for decades. T41 had the same Insert/Delete/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn block as most other Thinkpads and normal 101-keys keyboards.

There were A-series AFAIR that had this extra column, but IBM/Lenovo had enough engineering talent and management will to forget it, and keep the "legendary" keyboard layout usable, consistent, and whims-free.

 

Yes.

A3x series had an added extra row of so-called "web navigation keys" to the left BUT all the other keys were in their "proper" place, allowing users who didn't care for this "innovation" (likely 99.99% of the mankind) to type without intrusion. I'll admit that I did like them, and still use them when I'm on my A31p, but never felt that I missed them on any other ThinkPad.

IBM also introduced a 6-row layout on 240 series, but killed it instantly once that series was discontinued...I'm fairly certain that they got an earful about the given setup at the time...

They knew that there were NO unimportant keys on the keyboard that begged to be removed and put out of misery...

 

On the other hand, you have room for improvement when it comes to grasping at straws.

 

I don't get it, all my desktop keyboards have 6 rows....

From someone who doesn't use old Thinkpads, the 6 row layout is more understandeable.

Though, they could do with at least one "Thinkpad Retro" model. Wouldn't hurt.

 

That's because desktop keyboards have plenty space for full-sized function keys and to put Insert/Delete/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn group on the side instead of with the main keys. But I wouldn't have any problems with current 6-row layout if not for the fact that I'm even more than a year after getting W530 still making mistakes between Home/End/Insert keys where I was making none before on, say, T61p.

 

They wouldn't release a new keyboard just for 1 model, plus you have to remember BIOS support. A good reason why newer ThinkPads couldn't be retrofitted with the older 7 keyboard without a custom BIOS.

 

Being #1 PC maker, you'd think they have enough resources to make this happen, after all it's the reputation/image... but I don't see them caring much.

 

Seriously? Lenovo has so many "throwaway" laptops it's not even funny. Look at the U series, u330, u430 and u530, all have the same specs, but each one has their own chassis.

They could easily recycle the design from the X220/X301, upgrade the CPU/Chipset (they were easily capable of doing this in the Ideapad Y and Thinkpad S series) and call it a day.

 

Lenovo trolls all of us. I just want an uber thin convertible tablet x86 laptop. They can't even give me that.

 

The thing which is wrong with them is that nobody asked for them.

Please tell me what are the advantages of the following changes:

-Removing the trackpoint
-Removing the trackpad left/right as buttons (now they are just flat)
-Removing the 7th and 6th rows
-Changing the key depth feel (the x220 has MUCH better feel when typing compared with x230)

As I keep asking- what is wrong with taking the x201s or the x220, extending it by 1.5 inches, updating the display to 14 inch high-resolution IPS and voila! I would have 16GB, 14 inch, lightweight, amazing resolution, amazing keyboard.

Oh I know what it is! All those sheep who buy anything apple-branded (simply because their friends have it) wouldnt like it!

 

I wanted the legendary IBM keyboard to be use on every laptop but instead we get keyboards more like what Apple uses...

Apple sure knows how to make mid end stuff look high end. Apple definitely has a great marketing department. It's too bad other companies can't market their products as well.

 

The 13" Retina MacBook Pro is actually a pretty nice machine. Tried it for any length of time? I have.

 

Notice that I said most. Of course some of their products are worth the money but you don't get much of a choice of components (e.g. you want a professional GPU like what the Zbook 14 offers). I've used various Apple laptops but they don't offer what I expect.

I like having user replaceable parts , I don't know about you.

I like having a NBD on site warranty , I don't know about you.

In order for Apple to make a machine that appeals to most people , they have take away or don't offer what appeals to the rest of us.

Most of the time I mention that Apple doesn't make high end stuff , I get attacked by fanboys. The truth is that Apple doesn't really make high end stuff. They make nice machines , but definitely not high end. When I see other companies try and copy what they do , I get disappointed. There can be only one Apple in the world. Other companies should just stick to what they do best.
.