Thinkpads Forum

K. Eng wrote:Hmm... I don't think that adding a windows key is necessarily "consumerizing" the ThinkPad. Note that business class machines from Dell and HP have always had Windows keys. My old Latitude CPi (1998) had a Windows key.

jjfcpa wrote:Personally, I think these changes are significant in only one regard, they've chosen to "consumerize" the T series. They've never had a Windows key - so why add one now? It hasn't stopped me from buying a Thinkpad, but adding it might stop me from buying another! I'm not interested in investing in a line that is headed in that direction.

I would agree with you if this was a new model, not an upgrade to an existing model, and they included the Windows key. Like the Z series. Adding the Windows key makes sense. But adding the Windows key to the T series is obvious.. they are trying to make it more appealing to people who are looking at Inspiron's, HP's, and Gateway's. You may see this differently than I do, but I see it as Lenovo trying to make the T series more appealing to the - this will sound badly - less "professional".

SpaRood wrote:I think jjfcpa is incoherent. He complains that the Thinkpads are getting too mainstream, whatever that means, but one of the most mainstream laptops are the Dells, which he is a fan of. I find it rather sad that some just goes to a Thinkpad forum to bash it by focussing on very small details of newly announced laptops that they even haven't seen yet, and the question is still whether they are accurate and right with their premature conclusions.

Believe me, I'm not incoherant - perhaps you should look up the definition in Webster. I'm in the tech industry and provide tech services to the general public so I know how difficult that can be and the benefits of reaching a good technician to resolve a problem. Personally, I think those chances are hit and miss no matter who the vendor is.

Admittedly, I have NOT had as many Dells as I have Thinkpads. Because of the 24/7 up time my staff requires, I buy each and every one of them a new Thinkpad every 12-18 months. In the past, we've tried Sony, Toshiba, and HP's. One of the these that I will ALWAYS praise IBM about was the speed with which they would resolve a defective part. But I can't honestly say that they had fewer problems than any of the other models.

And again, in my experience on buying much fewer Dells (all Lattitudes, except for a 9300), they have been very reliable. Much fewer incidents of problems requiring support. In those cases that did, they were resolved just as quickly as with IBM.

Your experience may be different and I'm more that willing to concede that IBM was the best at providing at business class laptop that was reliable and solid. Lenovo doesn't have a long enough track record with the company for me to judge them. However, I predicted when they took over the laptop division of IBM that they would cheapen the product and perhaps take some corner on support. Longer depot times...

I guess I'll wait till I get my hands on a T60, because I WILL buy one, until I determine whether the quality is still there or slipping away.

Incidentally, I find it interesting that Dell appears to be going the other direction. Some of the Inspiron models are becoming more solidly built and may appeal to some semi-professionals, such as, the 630m, the 6000, or the 9300 (if they are desk bound).

I'm still waiting to see what Dell introduces with the dual core - the D620, D820, and M90 are supposed to be released next month. If they are Inspirion upgrades, I'll be totally disappointed - and not just in them - but in the entire laptop industry.

It's because people complained bitterly about Dell's shoddy build quality on early 600m models, the 8500/8600s, and their predecessors, the 4x00 and 8200 series!

Incidentally, I find it interesting that Dell appears to be going the other direction. Some of the Inspiron models are becoming more solidly built and may appeal to some semi-professionals, such as, the 630m, the 6000, or the 9300 (if they are desk bound).

And again, in my experience on buying much fewer Dells (all Lattitudes, except for a 9300), they have been very reliable. Much fewer incidents of problems requiring support. In those cases that did, they were resolved just as quickly as with IBM.

One thing to keep in mind - IBM has excellent service labs around the world. You can get an international warranty and you'll be able to fix any problems with your laptop in no time, no matter where you are. Can you do that with Dell? I live in Israel, so I wanted to get a laptop, knowing that if it needs service, I'll get that service here and fast. Hence, IBM had a big advantage over most others (including HP, whose worldwide service is excellent, but the Israeli branch plain stinks).

Heh. I guess we just disagree then. Plenty of "professional" products have had Windows keys since the Windows key was introduced. As the Windows key does have its uses, I can't say that it's unprofessional.

Unprofessional additions I think would be things that don't help the functionality of the notebook, like extra plastic curves, fins on the side, and TV tuner :p

You may see this differently than I do, but I see it as Lenovo trying to make the T series more appealing to the - this will sound badly - less "professional".

christopher_wolf wrote:Not to start bashing Dell...But whoever designed the Trackpoint and the related buttons on most Dells needs to have their head examined; the one on my Widescreen is recessed in between the G, H, and B keys and is too tiny for the hole leaving a significant gap around it. The buttons for it are no better, they cannot be consistently depressed enough without hitting the space bar and there is no tactile feedback telling you a successful button press has occured, add to that they are loose. ...

Not to jump on the "bash Dell" bandwagon, but back in the day the Latitude got a trackpoint, and some dumb bunny -- definitely NOT the sharpest pencil in their human interface design group -- decided that the buttons should encrouch on the space bar, resulting in ... my hitting a button and shifting my cursor around (often OUT of the text box) every few minutes.

Searched for a pic, and the best I could find was here.

I still cringe when I think of the day or two I took to figure out what was going wrong when I was typing a space with my left hand every few seconds.

Yup, I remember that Nightmare quite well with the Dell I had before my Widescreen...I *hated* the Trackpoint buttons on it and wondered just exactly what use they had in mind for it. It isn't just Dell that did that either, as I do remember some other manufacturers had a poorly-implemented Trackpoint+Touchpad setup where the Touchpad was nearly always emphasized more than the Trackpoint. Usually, the technique was to put small trackpoint mouse buttons, the user would give up and then start using the touchpad more and more. This hurts the maker of the system, too...Why spend money on both pointing devices if only one of them is usable in most situations?

When I used the trackpoint on the Dell D610, I was wondering why anyone would even what to use one... the button was not large enough to be pressed easily because it was a little bit recessed. And the touchpad buttons felt really cheap. I don't think that Lenovo has to worry too much about Dell for now.

However, the HP NC6230 has a pretty good trackpoint and the buttons actually feel pretty good as well. The keyboard is not bad either. HP is catching on so that should hopefully keep Lenovo on its heels.

Competition is good for all of us.

Yes, Competition is good; HP still has a good ways to go on keyboards. I still think that IBM/Lenovo will keep ahead of the pack when it comes to laptop design for many years to come.

HP also needs to boost their service; it has been over a month and I still haven't heard back from them about my, now defunct, ze5170. This is also the third time I have contacted them regarding fixing the ze5170 and I have gotten precious few answers back from them.

christopher_wolf wrote:Yup, I remember that Nightmare quite well with the Dell I had before my Widescreen...

I used the touchpad if only because I had to disable trackpoint, particularly because I was running Red Hat 7.x on it.

Actually (looking at that photo) I*loved* the Touchpad *buttons*, but the touchpad was too small for me. Now, the T40 touchpad ... aaaahhhhh, just right, as Goldilocks says.

Actually HP has backslid. The keyboard on my vintage Omnibook 800CT is quite good. Wore out after a few years of daily use, but in some ways, better tactile "feel" than my T43. ... Yes, you read that right.

christopher_wolf: Don't hold your breath. I was part of the battery **RECALL** where I was instructed to look for barcodes, which mine didn't have. I was still an affected model so I emailed them.


They never responded.


HP does indeed have a ways to go on keyboards. The ze5300 feels like I'm typing on a pillow. Since the ThinkPad, I've given it to my mother who loves it. To each their own. I did like the trackpad better on that than my ThinkPad, though. It feels smoother, and the buttons are larger. But the T43's trackpad is more than adequate. Fortunately, I've retrained myself to use the TouchPoint anyway. Ah, the old iSeries days. Or, as I call it now, a paperweight.

One thing that I think everyone will agree on is that Lenovo needs to color coordinate. Just take a look at the "Thinkvantage" button. That particular color of blue doesn't even closely resemble that of the "enter" key. It just strikes me as very odd looking.

Why did Lenovo feel it necessary to change the trackpoint buttons, the power on button, the volume buttons and add a wireless key and a windows key?

Perhaps they have selected the Z series as their "stardard" and are trying to bring the others in line with it. Too bad they didn't select their flagship T4x series as the "standard", because I think most people would agree that it's well built and extremely well designed.

Maybe; it does seem as if they are changing, in an overall sense, only minor things. At least it isn't the entire chassis style being changed. It might also be that they are trying out some new techniques on the laptops. Admittedly, I have little to no idea how the *colors* on the Trackpoint buttons could affect UI tasks from the user's point of view, besides just the asthetics.

TimWang wrote:One thing that I think everyone will agree on is that Lenovo needs to color coordinate. Just take a look at the "Thinkvantage" button. That particular color of blue doesn't even closely resemble that of the "enter" key. It just strikes me as very odd looking.

It looks dated to me, actually.

The "blue pill" Access IBM is perfect, I think. And it is a shame the T4x series wasn't used as a benchmark. The color coordination alone made it uniquely IBM.

Yea, I really like the color highlights on a T4x. The hint of blue on some of the key really went well with the bold red trackpoint and the red line on the mouse buttons.

If by "wireless key" someone means the FN + F5 button, ... it's already there in the T43, maybe the 42.

I'm with you Chris, the color-matching of blue buttons and such make no diff to a user doing work, real work even,... but, if I'm paying $2000 for a premium business class laptop, I don't have to, and will not, accept manufacturing "fit and finish" that makes it look like two different companies slapped it together. If I want that, I can pay $1000 less.

JonathanGennick wrote:

jjfcpa wrote: The issue simply is that when trying to view computers attached to a network, the system hangs and I have to do a "end task" in order to back out of the search.

Had similar problems once. While browsing my home network to find a shared folder, my system would take a loooong time, and then report back that nothing was found. I too never figured out the cause, though the problems have vanished since moving some of my shares to Linux and others to 64-bit Windows (they had all been on various 32-bit Windows boxen). My gut feeling, and I have no rock-solid proof to offer, is that my particular problem(s) came out of some subtle aspect of windows networking that I did not understand. I still use all the same Thinkpads that I used to use, and I now have no troubles at all in this area.

jjfcpa wrote: Anyhow, the real point of this post is during my discussions with the tech he confided in me that IBM had no knowledgebase to refer to when trying to diagnose problems. They have to deal with every call as if it's the first time anyone ever had that problem. Although he could refer to my file and see that I had called about this issue previously, he still had to go through their normal procedures to attempt to fix the problem... without any luck.

What you guys experienced is a common Windows problem related to Master Browser. It is a Microsoft fault and not IBM/Lenovo of course. There is tons of info on the internet on how to diagnose and fix it. I'ill just shoot one random link:
http://www.chicagotech.net/browser.htm

Hope it helps.

I too am with the majority of ThinkPad users on this one. The color highlights on the T4x were a nice touch. The dark gray keys at the top are nicely differentiated from the rest of the QUERTY keyboard, and the color coding on the ultranav (red for buttons, blue for scroll) just makes intuitive sense.

Now I don't think the new scheme is a total disaster, but I really do like the T4x and T4x ultranav better than those on the 60 series machines. The UltraNav on the T60/Z60 just doesn't look as balanced.

TimWang wrote:Yea, I really like the color highlights on a T4x. The hint of blue on some of the key really went well with the bold red trackpoint and the red line on the mouse buttons.

I'm glad to see more people sharing my feelings about the changes in the design of the keyboard and UltraNav from the T4x to the T6x.

If anyone's interested and hasn't already seen this, I started a thread about the changes in the T60 design here:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=21017

It was moved from the T60 section, because it became a more general discussion about Lenovo's design strategy and about form vs. function in general. Although it's still mostly really a thread about the T60 design.