Slashdot Mirror
Lenovo Could Remake the ThinkPad X300 With Current Technologies
MojoKid writes: The ThinkPad brand has been around for a long time; the first model was introduced by IBM way back in 1992. And although technological advances over the past two decades have lead to Lenovo ThinkPads that are lighter, much faster, and highly more cable than any model in the early 1990s could have ever imagined, there's still a clear visual link between yesteryear and today with regards to design cues. Well, apparently, Lenovo is seriously toying with the idea of making a "unique" model that would incorporate some of the strong ThinkPad language that has been erased in recent years. "Imagine a blue enter key, 7 row classic keyboard, 16:10 aspect ratio screen, multi-color ThinkPad logo, dedicated volume controls, rubberized paint, exposed screws, lots of status LEDs, and more. Think of it like stepping into a time machine and landing in 1992, but armed with today's technology." It might not be for everyone but some execs at Lenovo think there might be a market for it.
Shut up and take my money!
Lenovo ThinkPads that are lighter, much faster, and highly more cable than any model
As in wall-hugger?
"have lead to Lenovo ThinkPads that are lighter, much faster, and highly more cable"
I would've thought modern Lenovo's would be highly more WiFi than cable
My first Thinkpad was the original Thinkpad 700 with DOS. I used to hit the Thinkpad, throw the Thinkpad against walls, smash the Thinkpad with my fists, and urinate on the Thinkpad. Once, a whale ate my Thinkpad and I pursued it for weeks across the ocean until it defecated the Thinkpad back out. The Thinkpad booted up to prompt on the first try after that. Is there any laptop more celebrated on Slashdot. I think not.
Lose the trackpad, lose the windows keys, stuff it with the widescreen. Oh, and a high enter key. The colour stuff doesn't work with "thinkpad" like it did with "IBM". Want to win big? Do all that then do a fully open-source BIOS, with full documentation and support for at least two different open source OSes (not just two flavours of "linux").
It's quite interesting in a morbidly Chinese fashion to see how even this revamp doesn't really get it.
Insensitive clods.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Neat idea. But please ditch the old keyboard light. It was cute back in the 90ies, but seriously not anymore.
Individually lighted, dimable keys please. If Apple can do it, so can you.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
If they did this there is no question it would be my next dev machine. I've just bought a maxed out X1 Carbon (2015 version), which is a really fine bit of kit but I really miss the classic Thinkpad keyboard.
The initial ThinkPad was conceived as a tablet computer (named for the leather pad holders embossed w/ ``THINK'' which IBM issued to its employees — see the book _ThinkPad: A Different Shade of Blue_ for the backstory on that).
Really wishing that my ThinkPad x61T were a real replacement for my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4121 --- features I need:
- better stylus implementation (Wacom EMR is fine, so long as it's done well, Samsung certainly has this down, Toshiba w/ Wacom’s new AES has done well)
- daylight viewable display --- that's the big failing on most machines now, one can only get a true daylight viewable display on rugged machines sold to (and priced for) military, LEO and construction
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Would it have superfish and other viruses on there? Because I don't really remember IBM doing that. Lenovo might want to leave the Communist malware off. Or maybe they don't want to.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
I'd buy it if it had the old (non-chiclet) keyboard!
Drop the 16:10 aspect ratio, ThinkPads are work laptops not movie watchers. People spend $$$ to hack together multiple parts from different T6x series ThinkPads into a laptop with a QXGA (2048 x 1536) screen. I have one, it's awesome. Please sell those. And blinking lights don't fool us. Every feature should be there for a good reason. It should be designed with looks as the lowest priority.
when was the last time you used Linux?? Running Ubuntu Mate on a T61p right now, never skipped a beat from the moment it was install.. Compare that to my POS win7 work laptop that has been higly crappified by security and you'd choose linux everyday too.. Apple bahhh walled garden
I still use GEOS on my C64.
16:10 screen on a laptop, where do I sign up ??
42
Since the post is related, I will take my time to off-topically cast my votes as a consumer:
avoid Lenovo "ideapad" line like you'd avoid hell.
Mine has the worst screen I had ever seen in my life - worst contrast and highest reflection ever!
(it can't beat a generic sub $ 60 Chinese Android tablet's). Sound volume is poor almost as if non-existent,
keyboard build is flimsy.
Just say NO. And even if going to other Lenovo product lines, I'd be extra careful checking the overall building.
-><- no
I say move the lights to the sides of the screen and use a backlit keyboard. This allows for a document to be lit next to the laptop (this would be nice for gaming in the dark when taking notes).
And put a light on both sides rather than pandering to right-handed people...
BlameBillCosby.com
Imagine a blue enter key, 7 row classic keyboard, 16:10 aspect ratio screen, multi-color ThinkPad
so, Imagine IBM. This won't happen, and not because of cost or market, but because Lenovo has betrayed its actual intent as a profiteering multinational. Superfish should be all the average slashdotter needs to know about this company to arrive at the inevitable conclusion that lenovo is committed to realizing a captive audience and perpetual marketing revenue stream through their hardware. The only reason superfish was stopped was because lenovo got caught, not because they cared about what you think or how you approach general purpose computing.
brand me a nihilist but commodity computing is dead. Dell, HP, and even apple all do the same marketing and targeted advertising song and dance. if its not bloatware its shady 'privacy settings' in the OS that are disabled by default. most laptops are nothing more than 20 gigs of branded content and apps store turd polishing. desktops are the literal epitome of the cheapest chinese plastic that can be extruded into peripheral and PCB form, combined with a disingenuous and underhanded disrespect for the users intelligence. restore partitions replaced media and the average consumer started getting coddled at the 4th grade level for everything from return and repairs to power user options and even system administration.
build your own. pick an OS you like that helps you do what you want, not what some think tank in a conference room whiteboarded. And as for lenovo, you can have my full size aluminum tower when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Good people go to bed earlier.
give us the butterfly! The only cool IBM laptop.
Blue enter key? Are you kidding me?
Also, some OS/2
We started getting the latest batch of X250's and the only LEDs are on the power button and the dot of the i in ThinkPad!? It's impossible to know if it's doing anything at times and it's frustrating as hell.
As far as OS you might want to give Linux Mint a try. They do a respectable job of polishing Ubuntu into a quite capable system.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I mean, if you're going to go old school, you need to go old school.
FWIW, I thought the colored stuff on the old thinkpads was pretty awful anyway. Kind of how we knew parachute pants and double shoulder pads were a bad idea. Fun to look back and laugh at, but not something we really need to bring back.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
For a technical user why are lights even needed? I have a macbook from work and find it incredibly annoying the damn keyboard lights won't stay off.
Worse, the vaporware they are talking about doesn't even have anything new - it's just talking about design elements and style - that a company MIGHT return to.
Hey, can I write an article about a theoretically possible new car that has an expresso machine built into the engine, using it for heat?
How about my pipe dream of a house where all the furniture is built into the walls?
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
For a technical user why are lights even needed?
Because wiring closets are often poorly lit, and some of us work in the real world. I've been a lab administrator, that's nice work. It's not all work.
I have a macbook from work and find it incredibly annoying the damn keyboard lights won't stay off.
That's funny given that macs are supposed to just work, but how does it reflect on the concept of a backlit keyboard that doesn't suck?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Here's a link to the actual blog post from Lenovo. At the end the author says, "If you think Lenovo should make the retro inspired ThinkPad, or have suggestions on how to make it better, please post your comments here. We're listening."
After buying some Thinkpads X230, I discovered that I can only use the mini-pci slot with cards approved by Lenovo, and included in their stupid BIOS whitelist.
I won't buy a Thinkpad again until Lenovo stops this abhorrent practice.
And please, no more excuses for this behavior.
This could never happen with an opensource BIOS.
How about an Amiga made with current technology? I think there would be a bigger demand for that than for another thinkpad....
It's impossible to know if it's doing anything at times and it's frustrating as hell.
You mean a HDD light? Then why not an USB light, CPU light or RAM light?
I've always hated the Fn key position, I use the Ctrl key way to often to like that.
That being said my W540 is the best laptop I've ever used.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Neat idea. But please ditch the old keyboard light. It was cute back in the 90ies, but seriously not anymore.
Individually lighted, dimable keys please. If Apple can do it, so can you.
I prefer top lighting, but it doesn't really matter. It is a feature I use only a few times a year.
Perhaps Lenovo, even if they don't actually build this particular widget, should think very carefully about the fact that "Hey, what if we released a product that was just like what Thinkpads were before we started fucking with them?" is the most exciting idea they've had in a long time.
That may not be fun feedback; but it's important to know your strengths; and your limits.
I've owned a number of thinkpads since the mid 90's. great machines. I'm thinking about buying a new laptop now and would be all over a thinkpad with retro styling.
Hell Yeah! Can I swap my $h!ty W541 laptop out for one? God this laptop sux!
Please Lenovo, take my money. :-)
Seriously, this may end up a very good example of a company finally getting the message and listening to what customers want. I have been a huge ThinkPad fan for ages, even when they were made by IBM and impossible to afford unless your company bought one for you. The last three generations of ThinkPad T-series models have taken away the traditional IBM keyboard (although the replacement is still half-decent), TrackPoint buttons and LED indicators, probably in an attempt to look like a MacBook Pro. The last model (T450/550) restored the buttons on the TrackPoint, but still lacks the lower physical buttons on the touchpad.
All this time, all the traditionalists have bitterly complained and taken their money elsewhere. I'm living with the T540p now, hate the touchpad but I can't find another non-rugged laptop that can take the daily abuse it gets. (Funny note - being a product engineer for our company, I just had a meeting with a bunch of product managers last month. Each one of them had an identical MacBook Air. I hauled out my monster ThinkPad, and they said, "Heh, we need to get you a new laptop.")
It's kind of like Windows 8. Yes, _most_ people like shiny flashy things; that's why Apple products sell well. But there's another market segment that appreciates solid design and functionality. Alienating these people, who have just as much money to spend as the shiny flashy people do, is a good way to lose customers!
They do that. My broadwell X1 Carbon has nicely backlit keyboard (though I never use it).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
CPU and RAM lights would be constantly on (although I have seen gauges with multiple LEDs like on Apple Xserves). USB devices that shift between active and inactive states (HDDs, thumb drives, etc) have their own activity LEDs; no need for an LED on the bus. Although this reminds me of one quirk of Macs that I hate: the NICs have no LEDs, so testing jack on/off state is harder to do with a MacBook or iMac.
Thinkpads used to be good, but after having been burned and/or frustrated by several recent Lenovo purchases, I'm loathe to buy from them again. Doesn't seem to matter what it is... servers... laptops... it seems that all their care about nowadays is that when you push the power button it turns on. Whether it works properly after that is a different question entirely.
If the original Thinkpads were released with the quality Lenovo puts out now, they would never have been heralded as the durable workhorse they had been.
Perhaps Lenovo reads their mail. I have sent many suggestions to them like this.
i've had thinkpads with both the top led and the backlit keyboard. I prefer the latter, but it is quite nice to have the LED illuminate your work space a little. Maybe there could be room for both.
I bought a Thinkpad W540 in January, and I love it. Hasn't crashed once, battery life is ample. My biggest problem is lack of HDD light (I want to see drive status, but can't) and the fact that the plastic bezel around the monitor pops loose occasionally (annoying, but doesn't stop me from using it, and not a big enough deal for me to act on it). They've got a winning idea here -- appeal to a sense of nostalgia among a demographic that won't mind paying a little extra for something "collectable" that's also functional.
Not sure if this is actually an innovation, but it is a rare attempt to 'think different'. Remember that phrase? As an Apple evangelist for 36 years, I appreciate anything that goes beyond 'clone' status. Anyone who moves technology forward. Do we want adventurous leaders in our industry or do we want commodity followers?
...omphaloskepsis often...
My IBM ThinkPad T440p has a lighted keyboard with two levels of brightness. The best keyboard I've ever had in a notebook, and it has a nipple too! The rugged yet lightweight black boxy design is nice too.
How about a huge array of LEDs for all IRQ lines?
+1 to that.
Windows is no longer useful to the power user or developer in a corporate environment (that doesn't grok these things), just because security policy will usually demand that your computer is made to be useless, because an unrestrained computer is a powerful general purpose tool, and in most people's hands, a powerful tool is going to lead to unpleasant injuries fairly quickly.
The effort then required to work around the security so you can actually do your job gives me an acid stomach. The new fad is whitelisting, which means I have to approve of every program that I run on my machine. Including the ones I write. Even batch files.
Oh, but not new JAR files. >-<
Security theatre, makes you sick. People are making big bucks off this shite.
16:10 again? Yes please very much.
None of those things sound like 1992... I don't think there even *were* widescreen laptops in 1992? I certainly never saw them, at least - was all 4:3 back then. I don't remember seeing too many 16:10 laptop screens until the mid-2000s?
16:10 is definitely my preferred aspect ratio, so if this were to happen, and I could get it with everything else I would want in a laptop (17" screen, decent graphics card, SSD primary and large HDD secondary drive) for a reasonable price, I would absolutely jump on that. My laptop is getting kinda old, but I haven't upgraded in years because we're stuck on 16:9.
I can't go back to a laptop without touch. I still have and use my thinkpad T500 as a test machine. Every time I use it for more than a few minutes I tap the screen and feel frustration that it doesn't do what I want. Touch should just be standard these days.
to finally replace the R50 I bought refurbished 10 years ago. Will it have a parallel port?
The fact that it has less horizontal resolution makes it better?
Now when they moved to the Wide screen models, it was a fancy trick to lower the Vertical resolution, while offering a larger screen size. But that was when the average Resolution was around 72ppi. Today we are having much higher resolution screens, so going with this model will just cut away your horizontal resolution for you nostalgic feeling.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
... it included the tank like build quality of the old ThinkPads and wasn't just a visual overhaul.
I never liked Apples Keyboard light, I ended up disabling it. As when it there is dim light, the keyboard letters are at the same light color as the key background making it hard to read.
The thinkpad light can light up other stuff such as any paper you are looking at too.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
HDD, WiFi, Bluetooth. If I'm having issues with one and the light is off I know they hardware is turned off. Without the LED the OS can only report to me the state it sees which may or may not be hardware related.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
To me a technical user doesn't need to see the keys to type.
For what it's worth: I've got good old T41. It's running 1.6MHz Pentium M on 2Gb RAM. I've installed SSD and Lubuntu 14.04 (with forcepae). Works great! Funny thing - I've already got rid of much more up to date notebooks, but this one is such a pleasure to use, it's still sits on the side of my desk, powered 24/7 for quick lookups, experiments and what not.
The Intellipoint controller is the single best pointing device I have ever used. Better then a mouse because there are 4 less fingers away from the keyboard. Don't even get me started on touchpads, they are so inaccurate it is laughable.
If I want to buy a laptop and want to use it regularly for a long time without having to think about buying another, I buy a Thinkpad.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Gosh, you are the most awesome person ever. Can I subscribe to your newsletter? Man, I wish I was as cool as you.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
As a proud owner of Thinkpad 420 and X201, I want to say definitive YES! to this idea.
:-)
An ideal notebook will have:
1) a MATTE screen (no glassy nonsense, please!), preferably 4:3 (important for people who actually DO the job on the notebook instead watching films)
2) traditional, normal, sane keyboard (no ridiculous chicklet, please!)
3) decent computing power
4) standard power cable (like on all other Thinkpads)
5) ability to disassemble the whole thing with a screwdriver
And like other Slashdotters said, "Lenovo! Give me that X300 and take my money!!"
There are no physical stores that sell ThinkPad laptops that I know of. Every ThinkPad I have purchased in the past decade or so I have ordered through their website.
Though if they can make a new X300 and put it in ultrabook pricing, I would rush to their website to make it mine.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
IT Developers should be local administrators on their machine. If not, the company "is doing it wrong". Your complaints have nothing to do with the OS and everything to do with bad policy.
I'm confused. I have a T320. It's about three years old. With two minor changes, the "mock-up" picture is identiacl to my T520. The only differences I can see are the ugly "ThinkPad" logo which in no way is reminiscent of the old, multicolor IBM logo.and the status LEDs being moved from the bottom edge of the lid to the keyboard where they replace the useless "ThinkVantage" button.
Identical TrackPad and buttons. Identical fingerprint reader. Not very different. Makes me wonder what the latest ThinkPads look like, that a three year old system could be considered a "throw-back" to the old 700. They already brought back the most glaring "lost" feature when the new T450 restored the TrackPoint, a feature I consider essential as it "fixed" my RSI issues. (I just disable that silly touchpad.)
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
Because wiring closets are often poorly lit.
Somebody mod that up. I got no points when I need them.
I might add, lights also come in handy when servicing blackouts and your UPS's are gasping their last breath, and on red-eye flights.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
That is exactly like a 420's keyboard
And the policy has a lot to do with the OS and the design of it's default apps, which encourage people to shoot themselves in the foot.
* No "executable" flag for files
* Hiding file extensions by default
* The whole notion of embedding arbitrary binary code in webpages (ActiveX)
* Training people to click "yes" on everything by spamming approval dialogs for everything
Even as a local administrator, and with the rights to approve of any executable, this whitelisting software was an obstacle. And sucked performance out of everything - some I/O heavy operations took 7 times longer because it wanted to hash every file. I agree it was spectacularly bad policy, but if Windows wasn't so vulnerable to being infected with malware at the hands of its own user, it's not a policy that would be necessary.
...I still have two perfectly working Thinkpads; An IBM T50 (PIII, FreeBSD) and a Lenovo W510 (Core i5, Win7). The thing with a Thinkpad is.. you do not need to replace them every year, or even every five. Both of them have the thinklight, blue enter button, trackpoint, lots of blinkenlites, etc. If they'd ditch the trackpad entirely on a T or W series, I'd consider getting a third.
I broke the cable on mine plugging it into an ethernet port on a badly built computer; one of the little tags that fold over on the case was in the socket.
The irony being that (as I know now) it wouldn't have worked anyway.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Oh, right. I forgot Linux users, who cannot reliably know if their double-click actually performs the desired function or not.
Not sure what they're doing on the current line, but my T430 has 4 levels: off, low backlight, high backlight, screen-mounted light.
I use the backlit options all the time, don't think I've ever done much but blow past the overhead light though.
fencepost
just a little off
I suspect that this is a regulatory issue related to the fact that they treat those cards as field-replaceable items. Since almost all of the cards used are going to be wireless adapters linking into the built-in antennas, they may only be whitelisting cards for which they ran testing.
I got burned by this trying to switch someone with cheap ThinkPad Edge systems over to 5GHz - turned out those cheap systems were sold with no choice of wireless, so the whitelist was very short. We ended up replacing some network infrastructure instead.
fencepost
just a little off
I'm still using a T43. Never upgraded because with each subsequent model, the laptops started to lose just about all the features that made thinkpads special, such as the lid latches, thinklight (which shines slightly to the side of the keyboard to light up pperwork you might have next to it), superior keyboard layout. 16:10 resolution is also one thing which is far better than 16:9, certainly when you consider that it's meant to be for 'those who do'.
I remember reading that there was an internal memo in lenovo, one or two years ago, about how they were worried about losing so much of the business market to apple. I can't help but think that they've been losing business sales with the consecutive feature drops. I still find it crazy that they dropped the trackpoint buttons, and glad to see that they brought them back so quickly when they realised that people actually do want buttons. While some aspects of this announcement are interesting, others are a bit too nostalgic. Classic thinkpads have always been function over form, hopefully they don't lose sight of this by adding silly amounts of leds or skimping on quality, furthermore, that colourful thinkpad logo needs a complete rethink, also the renders are missing forward and back keys on the keyboard, that needs to be corrected.
With that said, I definitely need an upgrade, my T43 is quite tired, battery life is poor and I really do want to get something which functions as well, just with modern hardware and excellent battery life. I most certainly get one, more if it's unfortunately a one off model.
+1 to that.
Windows is no longer useful to the power user or developer in a corporate environment (that doesn't grok these things), just because security policy will usually demand that your computer is made to be useless,
Which is why every place I've ever worked in the last 10 years has a "Dev" environment not on the corp network. We have a whole bunch of Windows VMs on a separate network specifically for such users to allow them to do their jobs.
some I/O heavy operations took 7 times longer because it wanted to hash every file.
This always throws me when using newer Windows. The computer appears to hang, eventually a UAC prompt appears, and only then does the file copy actually begin.
Seems glitchy, yet this is the expected behaviour!
Another pet peeve is that Windows aligns non-resolution independant program text to the subpixel grid before scaling it on a high DPI screen. The result is a blurry mess.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Windows has that problem all the time when UAC gets involved in my experience. The prompt can be quite slow to appear depending on current disk I/O.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Also, Ford... ford should release an updated technologically but stylistically as close as they can to identical, 2016 (1964 1/2) Mustang! That'd be sweet!
That is exactly what they have been doing since 2005. You never noticed?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I don't quite understand what you are trying to say. With 16:10 screens, 1920x1200 was a standard resolution. The pixel dimensions for a 16:9 screen of comparable size and resolution are only 1920x1080, which is fewer pixels vertically, not more pixels horizontally.
That 16:10 screens had more pixels than "related" 16:9 screens was an arbitrary decision most likely made for ease of production. Now that that the roles are reversed, with 16:9 being the standard and 16:10 the outlier, it is just as likely that horizontal resolution on a 16:9 model would would be decreased to make a 16:10 screen. Apple has done exactly that with one of their newest models.
A user who wants a particular size of laptop, and who is switching from 16:10 to 16:9, would have to take a model with a shorter screen, not a wider one. Otherwise, they end up with a wider, less portable laptop.
Laptop depth is just as important as width to portability, so there is no advantage to 16:10 here, just selective thinking on your part.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Microcenter is currently offering 13 Thinkpad models at its retail outlets. Sometimes they even sell refurbs of older models.
Maybe it is me but a smaller size has never, well not recently - say 15-20 years, been a factor when I choose a new laptop. In all actuality, I almost always get a laptop that is "full size." I suspect there is a specific name for them but I do not know it. I prefer to get a laptop that has a full keyboard and a separate number pad of its own. I prefer to get a laptop that is large enough to have a second drive bay. I prefer having a second drive in them, especially if it is something I intend to use productively more so than something I use passively.
Again, this is something that may just be limited to me. I doubt I am the only one because, while increasing in rarity, they are still being made though finding one that suits my needs and has a second drive bay is becoming more difficult. At least I am able to still get a full number pad. When I want something smaller I get a netbook. If I want something lighter I will bring a tablet (though I have two, none is nearly as nice as my older Motion was). If I want something even more portable then I have a phone in my pocket that is faster than the computers were for the first 2/3+ of my life.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You, seemingly, will find any way to be irate. This can not be good for your health. You could try, I don't know, not using an Apple? I do not like them so I do not use them. I do not make it a point to bash them or find reasons to not like them. I do not like them because I have not taken the time to become familiar with their operating system and while I do own a slightly older MacBook it seldom gets turned on unless a guest wishes to make use of it. I bought it to learn about them because a few people kept asking me to work on them.
Anyhow, seriously... Being worked up and "concerned" is not a good state to be in. If you do not like it then you have a bunch of choices. Letting something control you, as you are doing, is giving it power over you and doing so is absurd, especially when it is something you do not like. Take it with a grain of salt but, seriously, either get professional help or just let it go.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Where can I buy one? I want one... yesterday! That's a great idea, lenovo's been copying apple (like everybody else) for too long now. I'd buy one immediately if this were true!!!!!! Last month I discarded the idea of buying the T540: the screen looked pityful, the touchpad looked bad, and there's no hd leds. Seriously? Why? Just because apple has scrapped them. If you copy apple, at least provide some decent screen resolution like they do. What are you waiting for? Get a decent thinkpad out again and I'll buy it now.
I've owned a T40p, a T41, an X60 (I'm typing on it now), a T42 (which is my mediacenter now), a T60 (which died because of the NVIDIA bug, otherwise I'd still be using it) and I bought my wife a T300.
I STOPPED buying thinkpads now and switched to a thinkpad clone by Samsung: new Thinkpads are crap now. Please bring them back. If Lenovo is really going to bring them back, I'd immediately buy two: one for me and one for my wife. PLEASE DO IT!!!! And put some good screen resolution in, will you?
They should remake the Butterfly Keyboard. I'd buy that.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
I've owned laptops with such lights for years and this feels more natural than backlit keys. You can actually see your hands and a bit of background instead of a bright glowing screen and bright letters in complete darkness. Cheap backlit keyboards also leak light, especially when looking from an angle.
And if you touch type the letters don't matter at all, you only need the light to find the keyboard.
Can't say I prefer one to another, but these lights do provide some advantages over backlit keyboards.
Key layout it's been the same for 100+ years. Can't you just memorize it? It's not that hard.
I'd say, no backlight and sturdy non-chiclet keys like they use to have.
I wish all the manufacturers (specially lenovo) stop copying Apple's 'cool' designs.
This is Thinkpad we're talking, people don't look up on classic models for the color if the Enter key, but because they were trusty machines, unbreakable, good battery life, mate high resolution displays and a very good keyboard for a laptop.