[ltp] Anyone played with an X240 yet?

[Alan Wood]

> From: Martin Steigerwald <Martin@lichtvoll.de>
> To: linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
> Subject: Re: [ltp] Anyone played with an X240 yet?
> Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 20:45:28 +0100
> Reply-To: linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
>
> Am Dienstag, 11. Februar 2014, 15:12:45 schrieb Dmitry Mikhailov:
>> On 02/11/2014 02:52 PM, Florian Reitmeir wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> =20
>>> it does not have any mouse buttons, so you cannot simple disable th=
> e
>>> touchpad. but there are some hacks flowing.. to reconfigure the
>>> touchpad..
>> =20
>> Holy sh*t. What have they done to out favourite lovely machines... So=
>
>> you can't keep your finger on the trackpoint buttons. Damn, why didn'=
> t
>> they make a sensor keyboard. Who-hoo, one large reconfigurable touchp=
> ad,
>> even larger than on Mac's.
>> =20
>> I'm really really dissappointed. Sorry guys.
>> =20
>> I'd like to know how to keep my 4:3 "T62" Frankenpad even longer.
>
> If I were Lenovo I monitor a mailing list like this one for customer fe=
> edback.
>
> They=B4d get it honestly and unfiltered. :)
>
I went to the store to play with the new breed of thinkpads.  I expected 
not to like the new touchpad, but I wanted to see if they were tolerable.
Well, my disgust was immediate and my hatred only grew as I used it more. 
To describe it as a downgrade might make others think they took something 
professional and made it consumer grade -- so that does not go far enough, 
for they have made it in to a toy.
The entire touchpad moves as you click on any button, so the kinetics of it 
feel really wrong, kind of like the original touchscreen blackberry phones 
did when you had to press that whole screen to activate a button.  On my 
current mouse config I have left+right simultaneous presses emulate a true 
middle button since I used the middle for scroll, this no longer seems
possible as the entire right side of the pad rises as you click the left 
button.  I wonder if you can even disable the trackpad functions in X 
while keeping the button functions active (I can't stand pads, to me the 
point of buying a thinkpad is the trackpoint).  But I suppose that doesn't 
even matter because the buttons themselves are so terrible that there's no 
chance I'd buy a thinkpad with the new layout.  It is actually  beyond 
terrible, it is a slap in the face to long time users.

I had been waiting for 2 years since my T61 broke to have a laptop that had 
USB3 and a real high res screen in a small form factor.  I was already 
pissed about the keyboard.  Really Lenovo, my X24 had the best keyboard and 
you all have made it continuously worse.  I remmember IBM reps advertising 
how the arrow keys were physically separated so you could feel them. 
First you all put those useless back/forward keys in there.  That was not 
the end of the world since I would immediately just remove the springs 
under them and regain my separation.  But I can't live without pgup/pgdn, 
so now I'm stuck with the crappy layout.  And now you've gone and put 
prtscrn in the bottom row?  Please fire the engineer who did that.  I'm ok 
with the chicklets but the removing of the extra row?  how can you even 
pretend that's an improvement?

I went online and bought a bunch of the older USB thinkpad keyboards and am 
going to have to carry a different platform to actually do computing, 
probably a tablet (anyone know of any strong haswell tablets out there for 
linux?).  It is like losing a friend, Lenovo has essentially abandoned me. 
Sure the trackpoint is still there, but it is neutered with the new 
buttons.
-alan