Ask Slashdot: Recommendations For a Laptop With a Keypad That Doesn't Suck

PhunkySchtuff writes "I'm seeking the collective's recommendations on a laptop with a numeric keypad that doesn't suck. For practicality reasons, an external USB keypad is less convenient than a built-in one. A keypad is required for entry of lots of numbers, and using the alpha keys with the Fn key to turn them into a keypad is not acceptable. Looking at the larger manufacturers, it seems that none of their business grade laptops (e.g. Lenovo's T-Series or similar quality levels) have numeric keypads. Looking at their laptops that do have keypads, invariably they are cheap, plastic and flimsy. Looking at Lenovo's offering with a Keypad, whilst it's a 15" screen, the vertical resolution is just 768 pixels, and the build quality of it leaves a lot to be desired. I need to find something that is built to the quality of a 'real' ThinkPad, or even a MacBook Pro, but has a full-sized keyboard with a numeric keypad and there doesn't seem to be anything like that on the market at the moment. This is a mystery to me as to why it would be the case as I'd imagine it's business users who need to use a keypad more than the average user, yet it is the consumer grade laptops that have keypads."

Comments

Clevo

[partofme]

Clevo's laptops are awesome. They're pricey, but well. I bought mine an year ago and it has been just awesome. Performance is better than you get out of your usual desktop, in games too. Cost 3000 euros, but totally worth it. It also has good numpad, which is essential.

Re:Clevo

[beelsebob]

They're also not laptops, they're desktops with screens attached. They're not portable, their battery doesn't last. I'm guessing that if the guy can't manage to carry a USB keyboard around, he also can't have a 3 ton brick as a "laptop".

Re:Clevo

[partofme]

I fully agree on the battery front. On my device it also goes empty really quickly. However, I think it's mostly about what your real usage is. As for me, I do not need a laptop that I can use on battery power anywhere. But as I live traveling, I need something that I can easily carry around and still be powerful. For that purpose it's perfect. I have power wherever I stay anyway.

And Macbook Air on the side :)

Re:Clevo

[Samantha Wright]

Well, there was this one thing... It looked pretty neat, but I've never heard of anyone who actually had one.

Re:Clevo

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell's 15" corporate/business laptops have a full 101 key keyboard with a numpad. We got two for our accountants at work and they love not having to pull out a second keyboard to enter data.

Toshiba

[basecastula]

P775d-s4360. bought one several months ago. key pad and keyboard rocks. Kinda shitty support however.

Re:Toshiba

[humphrm]

I had to say the same thing. $500 laptop with a numeric keypad, as an accounting geek I love it. I've also seen the Sony Vaio, but for cheap you want to go Toshiba.

Dell Precision M4600

[Anonymous Coward]

I have ordered a bunch of Precision M4600s for my users and they seem to like the keypad. Dell eliminated the speaker grills from on either side of the keyboard that were on the Precision M4500 and used the extra space for the keypad. The resolution is 1920 x 1080 unfortunately instead of 1920 x 1200 that was on the previous models. Screen is 15.4".

Re:Dell Precision M4600

[machine321]

I have a Latitude E6520 which also has a built-in number pad and 19x10 screen. I don't really like the number pad feature, I'm having trouble getting accustomed to having the keyboard shifted to the left. It's not flimsy, it has a metal top case and cast magnesium base (magnesium alloy, presumably). I've always enjoyed the build quality of the Precision laptops (I still have an M70 that gets occasional use) but I'd say that so far the E6520 is at least on par with the HP Elitebook line.

Centered

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly offtopic, but I like my keyboard centered. I don't get it how someone can use a laptop keyboard with numeric keypad.

Re:Centered

[cristiroma]

Let me think ... because not all are programmers? Numeric keyboards seem to make accountants come ...

Re:Centered

[History's Coming To]

Indeed - I worked in a bookshop where we were constantly entering ISBN numbers, a 13 digit string. It's an absolute nightmare to do on the top row, but you can learn to very quickly touch-type on a keypad in minutes. For normal typing yes you've got a point, but for anything involving continual entry of numeric data a keypad is so much faster and accurate it's unbelievable.

Re:Centered

[Compaqt]

Replying to you because you're logged in, and not the AC.

The way you handle a 15.6" laptop is:

1) If it's on your lap: just let the numpad hang off the side of your right thigh. No biggie.

2) If it's on a desk, and you're typing on the laptop keyboard itself, no problem. Just center yourself on the f and j keys.

3) If it's on a desk and you have a keyboard plugged in (probably 90% of the time), you're set.

Anyways, if you don't have a numpad, it's likely the other keys are also scrunched up or you have to access them via Fn, all bad for programming. Besides, don't all programmers like to have a full 104-key board?

Re:Centered

[Compaqt]

Preferences are personal, so I don't really want to tell you what you like.

But for those just considering a laptop, my experience:

1) Being centered on the screen is not a big deal. It's a small screen, after all. Even if it were huge (1920x1080 desktop monitor), and you weren't centered on it, you could put your main stuff on the left, and something else (email, notifications) on the right. But it's not.

This is, really, a self-solving problem: If the screen is small, it's small enough that all of it can be viewed at a glance. Doesn't matter it's not centered. If it's very wide, you can't use it for, say, typing without swinging your head left and right. So you'd sizing your window smaller anyway.

3) I know they call it a "lap-top", but, c'mon, for most people they're not going to have it on their laps other than maybe if they whip it out on the commute. Most of the time you'll be somewhere that has basic facilities, like tables and chairs, if not actual desks.

And a laptop keyboard isn't even a pound in weight.

For many people (perhaps not you), a laptop allows you to do your work wherever you want. But that doesn't mean you have to do it Bear Gryllis-style.

4) Full keyboard: Sorry, I assumed the needs of a developer. If you're not, you probably don't need a full keyboard with the keys in somewhat "normal" positions. Even if you are, a mini-laptop will do just fine if you're not developing on it.

Anyway: my advice for developers wanting to replace their aging desktop--get a 15.6" laptop w/ numpad with the biggest Core iX (i3, i5, i7) processor you can. The Core iX series features hardware virtualization, great for testing. Also get a dock (or failing that, a USB hub with your stuff plugged in), good chiclet-style laptop keyboard, mouse. Don't get a 17" because you need a big screen. Get a separate big monitor (at least 22") for probably less than the difference in price. Definitely have eSATA for backups. Get HDMI for crisp output to your external monitor. You'll have a great work setup plus you can take it along to client meetings, etc.

Buy a 17" laptop

[Barbara, not Barbie]

They have numpads, and bigger screens.

So you'll have to lug an extra pound or so. Big deal.

Re:Buy a 17" laptop

[TarMil]

Many 17" laptops have a numeric keypad. Hell, even some 15.4" ones.

Asus?

[gman003]

My old Asus M50 had a "full" keypad - the only difference is that the +-*/. keys are arranged slightly differently than is standard. My new G55 is likewise supposed to have one (although I have to advise against ordering one of those right now - there seems to be some sort of supply issue, as I've been waiting on mine for weeks now).

Those are both "gaming" laptops (and both 15" models, not 17"), probably not something your boss will approve, but still, check out their "business" laptops - they might have full keypads.

Re:Asus?

[ThunderBird89]

K53TA, bought it last summer, and works perfectly, has a nice integrated numpad, almost five hours of battery power, and more processing power than you can shake a stick at with its AMD A4/A6 APU + Radeon HD6650M. The 15,7" screen offers plenty of real estate for business work and enough for most games even, looks clear and visible even in sunlight, and eats up surprisingly little power while remaining visible when dimmed back. Also looks quite professional with the dark brown housing, which is ribbed on all surfaces, so fingerprints don't show up either, unlike on glossy casings.
Ports are in kind of a short supply though: 1xUSB 3.0, 1xUSB 2, 1xD-SUB, 1xHDMI, power on the left side, optical drive and 1xUSB 2.0, audio in-out on the right side, and that's it. And while the brown housing doesn't look half-bad, black might look even more professional, although this particular shade of brown plays some tricks on people's eyes, so they can barely tell the real color.

Explanation

[mobby_6kl]

The reason keypads aren't or real ThinkPads is that by including the extra 4 columns of keys, the whole keyboard and TrackPoint (or trackpad, if you're that sort of person) has to be shifted left. This means that you end up either sitting in middle relative to the screen with the hands positioned awkwardly, or having to look at the screen at an angle.

I have a T520 and while I was initially upset that it has huge speaker grilles on both sides, I actually came to appreciate this decision, though admittedly it would suck if I had to punch in numbers into a spreadsheet all day. Just get a ThinkPad and this baby

Dell Latitude = Pleasant Surprise

[TythosEternal]

It wasn't something I even considered when purchasing my current laptop, but I've since fallen in love with the keyboard (including keypad) on my Latitude E5520. Great action, no extraneous buttons, and very comfortable layout & size.

Whatever you chose, I'd recommend a close review of the layout (and trying the action, if you can get your hands on a demo) to make sure it's not too weird. Some manufacturers make some VERY interesting adjustments to fit keyboards onto their laptops. I purchased a standalone keyboard a couple of years back that was dirt-cheap and had great action, but the home-end-insert-delete block was rotated (arranged vertically) and it somehow became a major headache.

External is the way...

[markdavis]

>"Looking at the larger manufacturers, it seems that none of their business grade laptops (e.g. Lenovo's T-Series or similar quality levels) have numeric keypads"

That's because putting a keypad on a "laptop" turns it into a huge luggable... something not even suitable for "lap" use. The trend has been toward smaller, lighter, and more portable devices.

I understand what you want, and I love having a REAL numeric keypad. But I also just use a desktop with a full keyboard when I plan to be number crunching, or you can add an external keypad to a reasonably sized and portable laptop.

I also love having a real mouse. Touchpads cut my productivity by at least half. Trackpoints are 100% useless. So even on a "laptop", I am going to use a real mouse; and that takes space.... not much different than an external keypad.

Re:External is the way...

[optimism]

Trackpoints are 100% useless.

The initial research, back in the mid-1980s, with technical users, showed that Trackpoints were radically more efficient than moving your hand off the keyboard to access a pointing device.

Subsequent research, with mainstream consumers, showed that most people had trouble learning how to use it.

It isn't the technology; it's the ability of most people to get over a learning curve when they have another option readily available.

Try the Trackpoint again...try a little harder...and I bet you'll never go back to a mouse. :)

Re:External is the way...

[quacking duck]

Trackpoints are 100% useless.

The initial research, back in the mid-1980s, with technical users, showed that Trackpoints were radically more efficient than moving your hand off the keyboard to access a pointing device.

Subsequent research, with mainstream consumers, showed that most people had trouble learning how to use it.

I suspect that's because the mid-80s research didn't consider using a stationary area below the space bar for a pointing device, or using one of the two thumbs to move it around. How recent was the subsequent consumer research? Most non-Mac consumers probably hadn't used a mouse before Windows 3.x came out, so there wouldn't have been much bias toward any pointer technology if the latter research occurred before 1991 or so.

Apple's PowerBook 100 was the first laptop with a palm rest, which integrated perfectly with it being the first with a trackball, too. Even into the mid-90s many PC laptops still had no palmrest, let alone a larger pointing device. And by the time trackballs became common Apple had already dropped them in favour of trackpads.

I have used several business laptops with trackpoints, from IBM/Lenovo and HP. My current work laptop, a Thinkpad X201, doesn't even have a trackpad, and the trackpads on our X220s are so small they're useless so I end up using the trackpoints anyway.

Anyway, all that to say I believe I've used them enough to have an informed opinion of them, and mine is that they're fine if minimizing surface space is critical, but a proper-sized trackpad beats it hands down 9 times out of 10. I do like how on Thinkpads you can simulate the scroll wheel using the trackpoint while holding the middle "mouse" button beneath the spacebar, but most PC laptops don't bother, and instead reserve a strip on the side of the trackpad. This (and two-finger scrolling) is very poorly implemented on the X220's tiny trackpad.

On Mac laptops, the trackpads are so much larger and more functional (it can even recognize Chinese and other Asian language handwriting, which doesn't look like an out-of-box trackpad option in Windows), the trackpoint has zero advantages that I can see.

Dell Precision laptops

[MooRogue]

Dell Precision series has a 15" laptop with a numpad. Screen resolution goes up to 1920x1080, discrete graphics card.

I have a Dell Precision M4600 with a Nvidia graphics card, 1920x1080 screen and it has a numpad and both a trackpoint and touchpad.

Re:bluetooth/usb

[PyroMosh]

On top of that a friend of mine went through a quest for a "proper" external keypad a few years back.

He went through a half dozen external keypads, and discovered that they all simply emulate the 0-9 keys at the top of the keyboard (same charcode value, but different keycode value).

That's fine if all you want to do is numeric entry into a spreadsheet. But if the software you are using is expecting input from the keypad specifically, or is using the keypad as a kind of cursor control in menus, etc., it will break things.

I don't recall why this was a problem for my friend, but it may have been for use with some kind of poorly coded legacy software (he worked with animal rescues at the time, they're not known for being well funded).

I assume that the niche was small enough that even though there were a bunch of products on the market, they were probably all relying on a logic chip from a single manufacturer, though we never tore them down to verify this.

Vaio SE.

[Dot.Com.CEO]

I have a Sony Vaio 15 inch, SE series. 1080p screen (and really amazing at that), with a chiclet keyboard with numeric keypad. i7, 6Gb RAM, 640Gb disk. It cost about 1500eur. I am really happy with it, but PLEASE try the keyboard first because some people I've talked to seem to think it's a bit "loose" for their tastes. Don't care much about Sony being "evil" or whatever. I like their laptops.

sometimes the question is wrong

[bill_mcgonigle]

"For practical reasons, I'm trying to run my computer off a small fire, which boils water which turns a paddlewheel, which dumps more water into a bucket on a pully which turns a magneto, and I'm not getting a stable waveform. How can I make this work?"

"Just plug it into the wall outlet."

"Read TFS!"

"Consumer Grade"

[cirby]

I work with a lot of different laptop brands - I do convention and trade show computer support, among other things - and a lot of the "business class" machines out there are pretty weak in the specs department - no better (and often worse) than a good-quality "consumer" machine. Construction and case quality is often worse for the "business" machines.

I use a Toshiba Satellite A665 (a couple of years old). It's a 15.6" consumer-class machine, it has a full keyboard, a "real" graphics chip, and an i7 processor. I've only seen a few "business" machines actually in use in the last couple of years that come close in performance or specs. It's handled a lot of travel, been used for everything up to and including running high-res videos and animations on huge screens, and never even hiccuped. It also cost less than $900 when I got it. Machines with better specs are going for under $800 now.

Don't lock yourself into the "business" category - it's often just a way to get a few hundred bucks more out of a category-blinded MIS purchasing department.

Re:"Consumer Grade"

[cirby]

Yeah, that was something else I forgot to mention - I see (literally) hundreds of laptops, from all sorts of brands, each year.

I get all of the sob stories, all of the support nightmares, and then I get to make them work with random networks and projection systems.

The Toshibas are the ones that tend to be problem-free. That's why I bought mine. It's been pretty close to perfect for the last couple of years. The only thing I don't like is a minor design issue - they didn't put screw attachments for the external VGA connector, so you have to rely on friction (or gaff tape) to make sure the connector doesn't come off. That's almost universal nowadays, though, and if you're not a Power Point Ranger, it's a non-issue.

We're talking about a laptop that's traveled across the country (and out of the country) a few times, has been carried to work in a motorcycle backpack (a lot), and has been used to test out and operate high-end and low-end corporate video systems of all sorts. It's the machine we break out when we want to test a system that we aren't sure is working - if the system is working at all, something will show up. Of course, a lot of that comes from having an actual dedicated graphics chip (GeForce 310M) with a bit of dedicated graphics RAM (512 megs) - those shared memory machines tend to have issues with drivers and pushing signals through external ports. It's not really a massive gaming machine or anything like that, but it'll do a lot more than 90% of the "business" laptops out there.

Re:"Consumer Grade"

[PhunkySchtuff]

(Original submitter here)
When I'm talking about "business" or "consumer" grade, I'm talking about the difference between, say, a Lenovo ThinkPad T Series (I consider this a business laptop) as it's got a metal chassis, no flashy chrome and it's not loaded from the factory with buckets of crapware, versus say a cheap Dell that's got shiny plastic all over it, the entire thing creaks and flexes as you pick it up or open the lid and it's loaded up to the hilt with more crap software than anyone really needs...

In this case, raw specs play a second place to ergonomics and build quality. This is for my accountant to use Excel and QuickBooks on. She needs a keypad, it's as simple as that. I want to get her a laptop that's not going to fall apart in a couple of weeks. She doesn't need a quad-core i7, 8GB RAM and a 2GB graphics card. She does need a decent sized screen (in particular vertical resolution is very important for Excel) and she does use the laptop on the move all the time, so not having a plug-in USB keypad (which I'll admit was my first response to her requirements) is important as there will often be nowhere for her to place it.

She's currently got a 17" Dell, is not too worried about the size or the weight, however after 2-3 years of daily use on the move, this laptop is ready to fall apart.

Cost is largely irrelevant, within reason of course, and a laptop that's going to last the distance and not break is more important than getting the fastest CPU available.

Re:"Consumer Grade"

[PhunkySchtuff]

Agreed. Build quality is everything in a laptop as far as I'm concerned.

I've got a 3.5 year old MacBook Pro with their unibody enclosure. This thing is still as tight as the day I took it out of the box.
Yes, the CPU is showing it's age a bit, but as you've done I have upped the RAM and put in a SSD and I have no need to buy a new laptop (well, until the MacBook Pro with a retina display hits the market anyway)

Re:bluetooth/usb

[optimism]

external bluetooth or usb numeric keypad

I'm assuming the OP's problem with a USB keypad is that it requires a cable or dongle. A bluetooth keypad does not.

I have a couple of MS bluetooth keypads that I use with my X-series Thinkpads. These bluetooth keypads are very thin & light, work for many months on a single AAA, and just simply work every time I pull them out. Personally I think it's the best product ever sold by MS.

One huge benefit of a wireless external keypad is that you can place it in the most ergonomic position for your data-entry arm. Or remote-control arm. Or whatever task you're using it for.

With a built-in keypad, you either have a behemoth of a foldable computer (not really a laptop), or a squashed set of keys (not full size) or both.

M17x

[ffoiii]

I just bought an Alienware laptop from dell and the primary reason I bought the M17 vs the M14 was the presence of a 10 key keypad on the keyboard.

Ipad

[Swampash]

plus whatever bluetooth keyboard you want.

Re:bluetooth/usb

[PhunkySchtuff]

This is for my accountant to use Excel and QuickBooks on. She needs a keypad built in to the laptop, it's as simple as that. I want to get her a laptop that's not going to fall apart in a couple of weeks. She doesn't need a quad-core i7, 8GB RAM and a 2GB graphics card. She does need a decent sized screen (in particular vertical resolution is very important for Excel) and she does use the laptop on the move all the time, so not having a plug-in USB keypad (which I'll admit was my first response to her requirements) is important as there will often be nowhere for her to place it.

Re:bluetooth/usb

[PhunkySchtuff]

This is for my accountant to use Excel and QuickBooks on. She needs a keypad built into the laptop, it's as simple as that. I want to get her a laptop that's not going to fall apart in a couple of weeks. She doesn't need a quad-core i7, 8GB RAM and a 2GB graphics card. She does need a decent sized screen (in particular vertical resolution is very important for Excel) and she does use the laptop on the move all the time, so not having a plug-in USB keypad (which I'll admit was my first response to her requirements) is important as there will often be nowhere for her to place it.

Wide? Short!

[Hognoxious]

If it's widescreen they can charge a premium.

Shortscreen doesn't sound as good, does it?