Just like someone reading playboy for the articles, I typically read news aggregator sites for the comments.
Major news organisation provide a couple of paragraphs about the latest development and the interesting part is not the journalists opinion, but what the thousands of people reading the article have to say about it.
This holds for good sites, for e.g. youtube and some others - the comments are mostly worthless.
The new lenovo thinkpads are nearly as bad. I'm an x series user, the last model with a good keyboard for programming was the x220.
From the x230 onwards they have stupid chicklet keys, no visual representation of caps lock or numlock, bad trackpads, and 'modal' function keys - (visually represesented with LEDs of course). Abandoning traditional insert/delete/home/end/pgup/pgdn layout.
Superfish on thinkpads, this battery thing, this bios thing:
I really don't mind the keyboard on my X230. Then again, I don't see the point of caps lock or trackpads. The layout is a bit annoying when I switch back and forth to a T61, but that's due to the difference rather than inherent superiority. If the keyboard dies, I will obviously consider replacing it with an X220 keyboard but nothing makes me want to do that preemptively.
The plastic case seems a bit flimsy, but so far hasn't broken. And obviously having a shortscreen sucks, but I accepted that tradeoff for the LED backlight and better specs.
In no uncertain terms I absolutely detest the x230 keyboard. I am none too happy about the location of Insert on the x220.
It is like using a cheap acer/toshiba laptop from Argos. A common question I have using them is 'where have the HW UX geniuses decided to put this button I want to use?'.
Cheap laptops are fine by me, but that's not what I want from a thinkpad.
The fact that there is a difference at all is the inherent superiority, a standard layout that stood the test of time and changed for the sake of saving a few pennies.
The fact that you would consider replacing it if it dies with an x220 keyboard (thanks for the info I didn't know that was possible) shows that you do mind it to a small extent.
Also in addition to my prior whining about lenovo, their customer support and returns policy is nowhere near as good as IBM's was. A friend was sent the wrong laptop and after returning it & huge delays lenovo failed to source the correct laptop. He bought a dell.
Richard Sapper, the German industrial designer who orchestrated the look of the iconic laptop for IBM, died 83 years old. I'm blaming lenovo, he's probably spinning in his grave.
The keyboard is a very common complaint, so I just figured I'd throw in my two cents of not actually hating the chiclet-style keys. Because I was unsure before I bought it, and ended up not actually minding the different keycaps.
PgUp/PgDn are more my problem when switching back and forth to the T61, but I would probably fix that by remapping the T61. I don't see how Insert is that different between the two, but I'm not so picky with specific positioning because I don't "home row".
Don't worry, I'm also bitter about the erosion of Thinkpad - just not so much about the keyboard. The 1.75 inches of missing vertical screen real estate is a much bigger annoyance.
Soundcloud & co require the content provider to upload the content too. If you want to share the content, provide the seed. If you don't want to share the content, don't upload to soundcloud, don't provide the seed.
