I Love my T420

[t20user]

Celebrating my 9 year anniversary with this trusty old T420! It is arguably the best computer I have ever owned. I bought it new in 2012 and have been using it regularly since. I got an X1 Carbon a few years ago thinking I would prefer it, but went right back to the T420. I much prefer this keyboard to any of the new chicklet style.

In the 9 years I have had it the only issues have been CPU thermal grease and the aftermarket SSD just failed.

If Lenovo decided to sell a retro keyboard machine I might consider it, otherwise I plan to keep using this beast!

[atagunov]

Celebrating my 9 year anniversary with this trusty old T420! It is arguably the best computer I have ever owned. I bought it new in 2012 and have been using it regularly since.

Oh, man, I only got on T520 train much later - I didn't buy "new" until this year and while you had T420 I was in possession of a 15" 4:3 T60.
But I quite share your attachment to this generation.
My T520 has been serving me especially well since start of work from home in 2020.

I got an X1 Carbon a few years ago thinking I would prefer it, but went right back to the T420. I much prefer this keyboard to any of the new chicklet style.

I got an X2100 this year thinking I would prefer it, but I'm not sure that's gonna happen Even though it is a nice machine sharing the same kind of keyboard

[dr_st]

Greetings to another fan of "retro" 7-row keyboards.

To me this is the defining feature. All the Thinkpads I use have the 7-row keyboard, including a custom T430s and the Thinkpad 25. Those machines in my signature that have 6-row are not used by me.

If Lenovo decided to sell a retro keyboard machine I might consider it, otherwise I plan to keep using this beast!

Something would have to change within Lenovo for them to go back to offering 7-row options, otherwise we may never see such a machine in the Thinkpad lineup again.

[WarMachine]

Greetings to another fan of "retro" 7-row keyboards.

Hello,

He's not the only one, you're not the only one. I'm there too !
Writing this message on the NMB keyboard of my W520 !

i still don't understand why they went for the chiclet keyboards. Yes, the feeling is still great and better than a lot of other keyboards from other manufacturers, but keys have disappeared, they know that a good part of the users love the classic keyboard (they know it so well that they sold an anniversary machine with this very 7 row keyboard). Was it necessary to change just for changing ? Was it necessary to follow the other manufacturers which proposed for most of them at the time chiclet keyboards ? That's very strange. They wouldn't have done differently if they wanted to attract lambda consumers to their business machines. I was watching, yesterday, a Laptop Retrospective episode on Youtube. The guest was Rob Herman, an IBM product manager. He said that when he was working for IBM, there was a strict separation between the consumer products and the business products. He also said that one of his chief declared that Thinkpads would never be under one thousand dollars machines. His job was related to the development of the iSeries (with Acer), iSeries specifically designed for everyday consumers. They tried to bring the best of the true Thinkpads in these cheaper laptops, and that's a good thing (the Thinklight was first a feature found on the iSeries). Lenovo seems to have done the contrary. And not for the best, if I may say so. What a pity. The more the machines are new, the more the technical solutions are cheap. What to think for example about Thinkbooks, which are nothing less than cheap Thinkpads for students ?

The engineers design cool features on the paper, but for daily basis usage, it's really not appropriate (see the clunckpad on the T440 or, on the same T440, the maintaining system for the keyboard). They seem disconnected from reality. Don't they have the feedback on the users anymore ? Do they live in an ivory tower, on a little cloud ? I don't mind a little more weight, a little more height, if it can give me the opportunity to have a sturdy, comfortable and upgradable laptop). My feeling today : form over function. It should be the other way around. There was no complaints before when they were conceiving their products with this in mind.

And I prefer not to think of what will happen to us in 2025, when Windows 10 support will be over. Our beloved machines won't probably accept Windows 11 easily and not everybody can/is willing to use Linux or other alternative systems.

"You should open a museum". That's what lots of my acquaintances say when they know I have a lot of old machines. Perhaps it's what will be necessary in four years.

Well, we'll see. For now I want to take pleasure with my 7-row old laptops, which are still plenty useful.



W.

[mikemex]

i still don't understand why they went for the chiclet keyboards. Yes, the feeling is still great and better than a lot of other keyboards from other manufacturers, but keys have disappeared, they know that a good part of the users love the classic keyboard (they know it so well that they sold an anniversary machine with this very 7 row keyboard). Was it necessary to change just for changing ? Was it necessary to follow the other manufacturers which proposed for most of them at the time chiclet keyboards ? That's very strange. They wouldn't have done differently if they wanted to attract lambda consumers to their business machines. I was watching, yesterday, a Laptop Retrospective episode on Youtube. The guest was Rob Herman, an IBM product manager. He said that when he was working for IBM, there was a strict separation between the consumer products and the business products. He also said that one of his chief declared that Thinkpads would never be under one thousand dollars machines.

You've answered your own question: we live in a world where $200 Chromebooks do 99.9% of what most users expect a laptop to do. They can connect to the Internet, watch online videos, read e-mail, edit text and spreadsheets and run some random software to perform a specific task. Users no longer think in terms of "my laptop is getting slow, I need to upgrade the RAM" or "I'm running out of space, time for a new hard drive"; modern hardware has become so powerful/plentiful that even basic devices have more capacity than the average user really needs. Consider that, as the computing world moves online, people is losing the habit of storing their stuff in their own machine; most of what they do is stored in a remote server, where it can be accessed by any device. That's why optical drives disappeared from laptops and nobody noticed; and the reason why they are reducing the number of ports (in a world full of cloud services, even USB sticks are becoming a thing of the past; printers now connect wirelessly, etc.).

The keyboard decision was not made on ergonomic/practicality grounds; it was, plain and simple, based on sales expectations. Only we Thinkpad users are familiar with the concept of the Trackpoint; the vast majority of consumers find the touchpad and/or touchscreen more intuitive to use. I'm sure they won't hesitate to get rid of the Trackpoint if hardcore users weren't so used to it, so they decided to make as much room as possible for the touchpad by cutting a row from the keyboard. With the side benefit (in terms of sales potential) that the layout is more familiar to users coming from different brands (they don't want to alienate potential customers and we're definitely on the minority side).

So if potential clients no longer worry much about specifications, modularity, upgradeability, manageability and the like, what they do care about? Superficial things like looks. That's why devices are getting super thin and the visual aspect of the keyboard was kind of "lifted" by the chiclet design. In Thinkpads the frame around the keys is integrated into the keyboard itself, but more commercial brands such as Sony used to integrate the key frame into the palmrest. It offers no advantage whatsoever (and makes it a helluvah more difficult to service) but customers like it.

They tried to bring the best of the true Thinkpads in these cheaper laptops, and that's a good thing (the Thinklight was first a feature found on the iSeries). Lenovo seems to have done the contrary. And not for the best, if I may say so. What a pity. The more the machines are new, the more the technical solutions are cheap.

It's not really Lenovo's fault. In any society mediocrity imposes itself over time. IBM sold its laptop business to Lenovo because they realized corporate users no longer took laptop ownership and management so seriously. Like I said before, even corporate users began adopting the disposable, one-size-fits-all mentality of the average consumer. And they are always seduced by the argument of price.

They seem disconnected from reality. Don't they have the feedback on the users anymore ? Do they live in an ivory tower, on a little cloud ?

On the contrary; Lenovo sells many products. And I'm pretty sure the Thinkpad line contributes very little to that.

I don't mind a little more weight, a little more height, if it can give me the opportunity to have a sturdy, comfortable and upgradable laptop). My feeling today : form over function. It should be the other way around. There was no complaints before when they were conceiving their products with this in mind.

You're part of a minority. An elite minority, I must say; but a minority nonetheless.

And I prefer not to think of what will happen to us in 2025, when Windows 10 support will be over. Our beloved machines won't probably accept Windows 11 easily and not everybody can/is willing to use Linux or other alternative systems.

"You should open a museum". That's what lots of my acquaintances say when they know I have a lot of old machines. Perhaps it's what will be necessary in four years.

Well, we'll see. For now I want to take pleasure with my 7-row old laptops, which are still plenty useful.

You're not the only one concerned about all this. It's almost ironic that the world depends more and more on computing, yet it's level of sophistication is in sharp decline. I almost panicked when intel decided to delete all drivers for their older devices. Like they say in Law: this sets a very bad preceding. They are literally forcing us to dispose of devices that are perfectly functional.

Myself, I lost faith in Linux over a decade ago. It's never going to stop being the chaotic environment that it is. I still have some faith on ReactOS, but I doubt they realize their own importance as an unifying force in the free software world.

[dr_st]

The keyboard decision was not made on ergonomic/practicality grounds; it was, plain and simple, based on sales expectations. Only we Thinkpad users are familiar with the concept of the Trackpoint; the vast majority of consumers find the touchpad and/or touchscreen more intuitive to use. I'm sure they won't hesitate to get rid of the Trackpoint if hardcore users weren't so used to it, so they decided to make as much room as possible for the touchpad by cutting a row from the keyboard. With the side benefit (in terms of sales potential) that the layout is more familiar to users coming from different brands (they don't want to alienate potential customers and we're definitely on the minority side).

That is pretty much the way it is. Most customers don't care enough about 7-row versus 6-row. The small minority that does care about keyboard layout overwhelmingly prefers 7-row. If Lenovo is to design one keyboard layout to be used across the entire product line, then all things taken into account, it probably makes more sense to use the 6-row for its smaller footprint, as it gives more flexibility in other aspects of the design.

The flaw in this reasoning is the assumption that a single keyboard design must be used across the entire lineup. Why? With dozens / hundreds of models that differ in almost every other component - surely there is room for a few select models for this "elite minority" of keyboard-centric users. There is of course the fear that these models won't sell well, but it seems unfounded: because right now no manufacturer offers any alternative, Lenovo would easily win close to 100% of this market.

The Thinkpad 25 story showed that there is a simple winning formula here - you take an existing model, make a few small adjustments to accommodate the 7-row keyboard, and that's it. The T470 and TP25 share 90% of the components. The extra investment is small and the risk is negligible: the only reason TP25 didn't sell more units, is because Lenovo didn't want it to: they deliberately produced it as a limited-run model and offered it only through a small handful of channels.

But something like this requires a person with a vision to innovate outside the well-defined "cowardly" box of "whatever everyone else is doing" and "whatever the mainstream tech sites tells us that people want". Right now, it seems there is no such person at the controls in Lenovo, but all it really takes is one determined product manager, that values this one aspect and knows how to do things right. That's what I meant when I said "it requires a change within Lenovo". However, I'm not holding my breath on it happening.

[t20user]

With dozens / hundreds of models that differ in almost every other component - surely there is room for a few select models for this "elite minority" of keyboard-centric users. There is of course the fear that these models won't sell well, but it seems unfounded: because right now no manufacturer offers any alternative, Lenovo would easily win close to 100% of this market.

One would think that a huge company such as Lenovo has a top notch marketing team that understands what customers want, and where the perfect compromise lies between providing those needs and maximizing sales. Unfortunately through my own experience and a myriad of historical examples I know otherwise.

I did not know about the Thinkpad 25. Sounds like they tested the theory, but decided not to continue on that path.

[Bionicman]

I'm still using a T420 for a lot of things as well. I has survived a lot. Its keyboard feeling made it the reason I learned 10finger typing. The only thing I really hate about this laptop is its 16:9 ratio and washed out colour. Being used to a flexview Frankenpads or ips modern screens, I wish I could upgrade the screen. Unfortunately, people who have been selling upgraded T430 with classic 7row and good screen tend to do so on quad core machines without a wwan. Whereas I really use the wwan all the time and need as much battery life as possible.

As far as I remember the 6row chiclet design made its entry in a Lenovo cheap something *100 line somewhere back in 2010. That was before it debuted in a thinkpad X1. The first model it was put was targeted to be as cheap as possible, so that it can compete in the consumer market. Being cheaper, I suppose this is the first and most important reason why chiclet ended in all Thinkpads - at least back then. Additionally, Everything in newer models is cheaply made. Take a look at reddit marketplace - its flooded with 2 year old Thinkpads, some of them looking already worn out, others with several warranty replacements.

But this raises a question - why make good laptop keyboards, when the majority of people can't type ?
Why build machines with modularity, when the majority of people have zero common tech understanding and purchase new machine, because "my windows got problems, my ssd is full of files I have forgotten how they got there, therefore my machine is old and will buy a new one".
15 years ago people using laptops were much less and usually were professionals willing to pay big money to get serious systems. In the smartphone era laptops are old tech and old concept. So the market just reflects the normalization of mediocrity.

[mikemex]

15 years ago people using laptops were much less and usually were professionals willing to pay big money to get serious systems. In the smartphone era laptops are old tech and old concept. So the market just reflects the normalization of mediocrity.

Let's not be so dramatic. If you're going to sit down and type a lot, the proper device is a desktop PC and not a laptop.

Don't you think it's just as wrong to expect a phone to do the job of a laptop, as to expect a laptop do the job of a desktop?

[Bionicman]

15 years ago people using laptops were much less and usually were professionals willing to pay big money to get serious systems. In the smartphone era laptops are old tech and old concept. So the market just reflects the normalization of mediocrity.

Let's not be so dramatic. If you're going to sit down and type a lot, the proper device is a desktop PC and not a laptop.

Don't you think it's just as wrong to expect a phone to do the job of a laptop, as to expect a laptop do the job of a desktop?

I agree completely. However, these are not my words. People tell me that and I see that they prefer doing more and more things entirely and only on their phones. Even if it is tremendously worse experience for them. I could be a form of addiction, I don't know. Whatever it is, it objectively exists as a phenomenon.

[TPFanatic]

I can do a lot on my Android but the ThinkPad beats it every time in multitasking. Copying data between Apps on the phone is like playing hot potato, with extra difficulty if an App doesn't support split-screen. As well in my experience Android doesn't keep programs off-screen in-session, so if it's a password protected App you have to log back in again each time you come back from a different App.

For what it can do, the smartphone is incredibly capable and I'm very satisfied with it. Some tasks just are not meant for it. Be reasonable and you'll be happy.