I get excited about different laptops occasionally...and then I remember that I won't have a trackpoint if I switch to a different brand, and I get disappointed. Literally happens every few months.
Just got a new one from work. It's literally in front of me right now.
Granted the laptop's build quality is questionable (the right hinge's case bulges higher than the left) and the trackpoint has a tendency to get stuck to one direction.
Edit: I would pay for such a keyboard for the Frame.work; it would actually very much stimulate me to buy one! I really hope to see crowdfunding from people who just make a Frame.work part.
Using your thumb to control the trackpad works better on Mac laptops because the Force Touch trackpad allows you to press anywhere to click. Most PC laptops have a "diving board" click mechanism which means it gets progressively harder to click the further you are from the bottom, and clicking near the top is impossible. Also, Mac laptops position the top of the trackpad closer to the keyboard than other laptops I've seen.
You can use tap-to-click as a work-around for being unable to click the top of the trackpad, but I find tap-to-click less usable for other reasons.
Not really, they are among the rare laptops to still offer S3 for Linux.
And the X1 Fold is a technical marvel (working on Linux support right now, if I'm successful it may become my next toy device to try to use Linux on as a daily driver)
> Framework seems uniquely positioned to fix this though. Someone just needs to do a compatible top cover that takes Thinkpad keyboards.
This. I will buy one as soon as they make a thinkpad like keyboard [+] or the possibly to disassemble and mount a genuine Thinkpad keyboard.
+ : A keyboard qualifies as a "thinkpad keyboard" if has all of the following:
- PageUp above Left, PageDown above Right: to me, that's the most important thing ever!
- PrintScreen between right Alt and right Ctrl: very important too
- Delete above Backspace
- A trackpoint between the {G,H,B} keys with 3 buttons below the Spacebar: I'm not a trackpoint fanatic but I appreciate the precision it offers when I need it, and badly felt its absence when I tried a macbook (no, can't do!)
I fully understand I'm a vanishing minority, But trackpoint is such a productivity booster for me, and makes such amazing use of space in a laptop format, that it's a must-have (and again, I fully understand that those who don't use Trackpoint will have no comprehension of what am I going on about; I'm a grouchy quirky old man :).
Then there's other little things that may or may not be trackpad related - small function keys, lack of standard home/end/insert/del/pgup/pgdown cluster, and the collapsed arrows which I don't even understand - you have the room, it's right there, nothing is using it... why is everybody making up and down arrows functionally unusable (I want to blame Apple, but as Obi Wan said - who's the bigger fool, the fool, or the fool that follows :)
This so much!!
I miss PageUp and PageDown there so much I refuse to buy anything but thinkpads right now.
The last alternative brand was Dell, which adopted the stupidly huge Left and Right arrows, and that's even seen on customer line Lenovos now :(
Meanwhile I am wondering why there aren't many third party mods for the framework around. Would it be feasible to design a trackpoint keyboard (if you figure out how to put it in the profile) ? Does it connect via USB or alike internally?
https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/detail.aspx?id=12...
and a paper: https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/a/pdf/Zhai%20scro...
The features are great but my complaint was about quality control. My T460s has had every single part but the chassis replaced, some multiple times, and still failed. A new T14s had to have the keyboard replaced because it randomly missed keystrokes. It then started having the screen randomly start flickering after resume. A new X1, top of the line 4K spec, has the internal screen randomly lose sync. The days of Thinkpads as dependable machines seem gone.
I believe it's all due to the large hardware and firmware changes.
Take for example USB-C: we don't know yet how to make study ports. My X1 had its motherboard replaced due to a dead port.
Or look at ACPI S0ix: it's only since last year that it's become comparable to S3 in power consumption (and S3 is no longer officially supported since Intel 11th gen)
The keyboard too changed: the layout is the same as the xx30 series, but there's less travel.
Likewise, the screens are now 2k or 4k with thinner bezels, and intel HUD ("Xe graphic") is quite different from the previous generations: even if it's handled by the same i915 driver on Linux, GUC/HUC are more important, and disabling PSR no longer makes sense.
Change is constant, but I believe pre pandemic and post pandemic Thinkpads are very different beasts.
It has two scrollwheels, one for vertical and one for horizontal. They have some interesting tech in them. When moved slowly they click with detents, like normal scrollwheels. But when you move the wheels more quickly they "unlock" to spin freely, you can scroll at a pretty high speed and with good accuracy.
I think they were competitive with old touchpads (and probably the ones you still get on cheap laptops) but I expect all the people above praising them have just never used a modern Apple touchpad. Far superior. It's not even close.
There's a good reason nobody makes them anymore.
I suppose a trackpoint might be useful if you really want your hands never to leave your keyboard, but generally I'm either editing text with emacs keybindings (where I don't have to use the mouse), or else I'm in a mode where having one hand off the keyboard doesn't feel at all hindering.
Maybe I could be convinced, but since they're hard to find these days and getting harder there wouldn't be much point (except to frustrate myself on the off chance I ended up loving them).
But yeah, sad that more laptops don't have trackpoints.
They don't have a learning curve in the sense that it's difficult to make one functional, but when I did try a trackpoint I felt it terribly awkward and imprecise. I'm not at all surprised that there would be a transition period after which trackpoints at least felt better to use.
I've tried it on both Windows and Linux. I realize I'm not used to it, in the beginning I used to have a hard time with mice, too, so maybe it's just a question of habit.
For the moment, the only thing it does is leave a round trace on my screen whenever I close it...
> PageUp above Left, PageDown above Right: to me, that's the most important thing ever!
> PrintScreen between right Alt and right Ctrl: very important too
That's not a proper ThinkPad keyboard at all. That's the new 6-row fake which has 10 fewer keys than a proper ThinkPad keyboard, which is this one: https://laptopkeys.com/uploads/704_1348778226_Lenovo%20t410s...
I haven't used the MX Master, only very briefly tested a display unit at a store, but I do believe that it spun for a while. So I'd check a video review first if you're thinking of buying one.
I personally use their G(aming) series mice with their older manual, mechanical mechanism instead of the new electromagnetic one in the MX Master. The G mice spin for a while... 15 seconds after a solid flick.
They do have a learning curve; but FWIW, I feel exact the opposite - I can achieve both lightning fast movement, AND pixel-perfect precision with the trackpoint (the latter I have never managed to consistently achieve on a trackpad).
(Note, for me, it's never a "Trackpoint vs Mouse". I'll use mouse 100% of the time when at my desk. When not at the desk though, it's "Trackpoint vs Trackpad", and for the amount of space it takes, the compromises it instills in keyboard layout and ergonomics, Trackpad never quite worked for me. On aside, I miss the potential of netbooks because a 10" screen with Trackpoint would be a formidable hyper-portable machine with today's ARM processors - but not if you need to reserve 5 inches for a trackpad :| )
But they do. Last I checked HP, Dell and Lenovo all had options for power users (not in their consumer / mid-range laptops though). Or at the very least, my last several and current clients have all sent me laptops with a Trackpoint from those three brands (and not to my asking; it's just fairly standard for mobile employees or enterprise customers to have Trackpoint included)
>>What learning curve? Isn't it just a joystick mouse?
well, no - to me, that's an inherent contradiction: Mouse and trackpad are both positional (as largely is trackball). Joystick, trackpoint are directional. They are fundamentally different paradigms.
In terms of learning curve, I do believe Trackpoint is less intuitive for most users, as it does have that different paradigm. I think it takes a bit of time to get really good at it - most people who use it for a few minutes feel it's inferior and clumsy. But I've had "races" with my colleagues with Macbooks, and spoiler - I'll agree it's not even close, but not necessarily in the direction you might expect 0:-)
(on aside, I do have a Macbook, it's about 4 years old. How new does a modern it need to be to fit your definition of a modern Apple Trackpad?
I don't have your hinge issue. But, as you open the display, the hinge gets below the laptop's feet. So now it slides around on the table. Which is so stupid, because this laptop doesn't have 4 feet, but 2 large ones, than run the width of the laptop. Which is fantastic if you want to use it on the corner of a table since it won't wobble!
Then there's the screen. I swear someone at HP wanted to see how shitty a screen they could get away with in a 2000 euro laptop (which is just a middle of the road config, mind you). On basic models, you have a 6 bit screen. On higher-end ones, they have this security screen thingy that massacres the viewing angles even when it's off. If you move your head around the tiniest bit (say while listening to music) the colors will perceptibly change. The colors are atrocious. And they don't even hide it! The specs say 72% NTSC (not sRGB, which is much wider).
Then you have your usual suspects with cheap laptops: the cooler is an absolute joke, the fan developed a horrible noise in a few months. There's coil whine that drives you up a wall when connecting a USB-C monitor + power.
On the plus side, the analog headphone out is surprisingly good. I don't hear any background noise, there's no whine when moving the mouse, and the sound is similar to my Retina MBP on relatively high-end headphones.
It also works very well on Linux, I'd say it's even better than Windows: I've installed a fresh copy of Windows 11 and I can't get the camera to work. It works perfectly on Linux.
Especially on some apps (iirc pgadmin) where the tabs has no close button, that we need to right click and choose a menu to close a tab.
On mine, the horizontal wheel does not have this feature. Maybe the newer model does.
And like another poster mentioned, it has a detent when scrolling slowly like a traditional scrollwheel, that then mechanically disengages when flicked fast enough. You can configure this sensitivity in software, and even map one of the mouse buttons to disengage the detent, if you dont like the smart scroll feature.
Its seriously the best designed mouse I've ever used. It's clear logitech spent a lot of effort thinking about what makes a good mouse really good, and they implemented that in this mouse. Truly a flagship device, without cruft or unnecessary crap.
Battery life after about 4 years is so-so, so I keep a usb cable on my desk to plug it in when it runs low. I get about 2 weeks out of it?
Materials are also degrading a bit, it's surface is becoming sticky like many "velvet" finish plastics do, but its not at a point where it's gross to hold.
Its held up very very well after roughly 1000 work days of use. It's cost per day of use is basically 0.
This modern layout has advantages: for example, the space between the keys makes it more comfortable to use with nails, so I no longer have to keep them short.
Layout and the shape of keys are orthogonal concepts.
But yeah, you're right that there aren't many options these days, and the T25 is getting old. :-(
I was an MX Master 2 user for years, and bought a 3, along with an MX Keys [1] at the beginning of covid WFH. still going strong 2 years later, and I would buy both again in a heartbeat.
0: https://blog.bolt.io/logitech-mx-master-3-vs-2s/
1: https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/keyboards/mx-keys-wi...
I have both the current model and the older one. the horizontal wheel has been improved a bit - it's larger, and they moved the side buttons so that it's harder to hit them accidentally when scrolling horizontally (see this [0] comparison pic from a teardown [1] that I also linked elsewhere in this thread)
but the "shifting" feature is still only for the main scrollwheel, not the horizontal one. in practice I've never found myself using horizontal scroll often enough to wish it had the same "flick" capability.
There is a discussion here https://community.frame.work/t/any-chance-of-trackpoint/1026....
I find it much more comfortable than the trackpad, but my curosr always seems so slow when it's not going way too fast. Is there special software tweaking I need?
EDIT: I forgot to mention I'm on Linux
Yes. Who ever thought making up and down arrow keys so small was a good idea? They are high usage keys, and every time I'm on a laptop keyboard like that, I cringe whenever I use the arrow keys.
In fact, the keyboard is the first thing I look at when I'm in the market for a laptop. Small arrow keys = pass, I won't even look at the specs or price.
There is always a model or two in every laptop manufacturer's mobile workstation lineups with a pointing stick, for that reason. Not often is in consumer or non-workstation business laptops, and I was never impressed with one, but there always is one.
Please don't. Unless you want users of language layouts that make use AltGr to suffer.
Imagine typing away a message, accidentally slipping your finger from AltGr onto the PrintScr (actually SysRq), and triggering a sysrq reboot in linux. Regularly.
It's a choice between triggering crashes _all the time_, or disabling sysrq and never being able to debug the legit ones.
One nice thing about many used ThinkPads at least: trackpoints are usually the one component that are brand new on the device :D
And I'm ready to admit I am not an expert on it; my point is exactly that I am an expert on track point and it's awesome :-)
Please do!
Because even with the most generous interpretation of your issue, it seems fully self-inflicted, by a lack of typing skills compounded by refusing to configure the keymap or the sysreq bitmask, and asking instead for that to become everyone problem by having the key moved!
> accidentally slipping your finger from AltGr onto the PrintScr
What about learning to touchtype? And until them, typing in a well lit room?
> It's a choice between triggering crashes _all the time_, or disabling sysrq and never being able to debug the legit ones.
That's a false dichotomy. You are not triggering crashes, you are instructing your computer to reboot (sysreq B) which it does.
It should not be blamed on the computer, but on your lack of attention, and the lack of adaptation, so I'd even call that a self inflicted problem.
If you can take the time to configure your laptop to use a non standard layout, you can certainly take the extra time to learn proper typing instead of bothering the vast majority of those who are happy with this layout.
If you can't take that time, you can certainly apply one of the many possible counter measures, like moving sysreq to another key (cf dumpkeys and loadkeys), or just disabling the sysreq reboot function (0 disables sysreq, 1 enables it, but you can have a finer control if you read the documentation, ex: 128 is the bitmask for the reboot/poweroff) which would let you debug the "legit ones" - though if your linux has legit crashes, you may have bigger problems!
So, git gud? Sorry, I'm not buying it. People have different motor skills, you know. You can't always make your body physically perfect.
Changing the mapping might work (although I doubt it, it's a deep kernel mechanism that probably avoids such complexity), but requires having the knowledge that it's even possible and how to do it. Sadly, laptops don't come with the instructions. And why should they? Machines should be made well in the first place.
Oh, and setting a mask doesn't help because b, c, e, i, k, o, r, u, all have nasty consequences.
Yes, bring on the numpad on a laptop... not!
Form determines function: ANSI 104 had its time, when we were using desktops!
Now except for gaming and CPAs, numpads have outlived their usefulness.
If if's bothering you as much as you said, YES, stop complaining, and start acting on your complaints!
I've already given you all the pointers.
Now I'll help you more if you need.
> Sorry, I'm not buying it.
Neither am I. I get the feeling you want to complain more than you want to actually solve your problem. But as this is HN, I'm giving your comment the most positive interpretation possible.
> People have different motor skills, you know. You can't always make your body physically perfect.
So you don't want to try or, due to physical limitations, can't train better fine motor skills to be on par with about 90% of the regular population? Not very plausible, but why not!
Still, this leaves remapping Sysrq or configuring the bitmask, so I'll guide you though the keymap fixing if you need (even if I hope I won't have to, and that you'll be able to learn by yourself with the right pointers)
> Changing the mapping might work (although I doubt it, it's a deep kernel mechanism that probably avoids such complexity),
With computers, there is no place for philosophical doubts: you try it, and note the results of the experiment: either it does work, or it doesn't work. And if it doesn't, you can make it do so by reading the code, understanding then changing it.
So first, did you try it? If not, why? If you did, what did you observe?
BTW if you didn't, let me remove some of your doubts: dumpkeys and loadkeys are all that you need to change the sysreq mapping: the "deep kernel mechanism" links an action with a key through a table, defined in software.
This is just like how the same key can trigger a Y or a Z (US vs German keyboards) - and yes, you can change that too if you don't like it.
To have a look at this tablet, outside X or Wayland (ex: chvt 1), do:
dumpkeys > current.map
Edit it with your favorite editor to move Sysrq to where you want ex (ex: Insert key?).
You can also add any other changes you want (like, keep both your alt as regular alt, and instead make something else the 3rd level key - say the right ctrl key?)
> requires having the knowledge that it's even possible and how to do it.
Yes, this is called having agency. But here, I gave you the knowledge! Do you have another complain/excuse? Or are you willing to try to fix the problem now?
BTW regarding "agency", I don't use Linux as a daily driver- I prefer Windows, not just because it's less elitist, but due to the better terminal options and the greater hackability of its GUI. You don't have to use Linux if you don't like it! There are many things I dislike in Linux myself.
> Sadly, laptops don't come with the instructions.
You'll find most of the instructions you want (and more!) on the Arch wiki.
But if it doesn't exist or if it's not accessible enough, what about writing some?
Personally, I'm preparing a tutorial to help people with a specific tablet (great hardware, but bad software and configuration OOB, so most people hated it, which I find sad)
Maybe you could do the same, as other people may be inconvenienced by the same problem you are having, and would benefit from your solution?
> And why should they
Because you or someone else (say me!) cares enough to want to hack they hardware to do their bidding? Because it fun?
> Machines should be made well in the first place.
Different people want different things.
Some tastes can't be reconciled.
> Oh, and setting a mask doesn't help because b, c, e, i, k, o, r, u, all have nasty consequences.
Do you really want/need me to also write your bitmask for you? Select the ones you won't want, and mask them out
But again, you should take the easy way out: just remap Sysrq to another key that's away from your fingers, and call it a day! You could have done this remapping in less than half the time it took you to write this complain!
I just did: I raised an objection to a bad idea for anyone who might be misled by it. Also I won't buy a computer with this flaw.
> So first, did you try it? If not, why?
I did not, because I did not know how. I also don't want to know how to alter my computer to achieve a basic minimum of functionality, because a minimum is what is assumed. Either the OS or the hardware should have sane defaults.
> Different people want different things.
I suggest you remap your keys (when you use Linux) to fit your special need then ;)
>I did not, because I did not know how.
Now you do
> I suggest you remap your keys (when you use Linux) to fit your special need then ;)
When there is no physical key, like to the left and right of the up arrow where pagedown and pageup would be, I can't invent them out of thin air.