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Comment by spaniard89277 | Hacker News Reader

I've tried many times to get something else, but I stick with thinkpads because they're easy to service, and the trackpoint. The trackpoint is a big deal for me.

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The more recent ones without the battery slots are pretty horrendous to service. They are a complete mishmash of absolutely standard laptop design the same as all the other vendors. Screws yes, but then a layer of fragile clips on the chassis. Then tape. Lots of tape. I’m not a fan.

The best part of the thinkpads is the sheer amount of corporate corpses on the market which keeps the parts available and cheap.

I still have a x260, but yes, I believe that's the trend. If frame.work manages to get a decent keyboard with trackpoint, I'm probably in. I don't know about the build quality yet.

I went from a ThinkPad (T61) to MBP and have used these ever since (except I bought a second hand T61 a couple of years ago, still liked the trackpoint but hardware too slow and 32 bit). The Apple Magic Trackpad 2 (not the big one though it might also be great) is an amazing trackpad (on macOS). It made me not miss the trackpoint (which is very useful given its size, indeed). If frame.work's touchpad comes close to it, it'd be my main concern for non-Macbook laptops.

I travel semi frequently with my laptop by Train, and use it often in outdoors. I can use a trackpad, but honestly the trackpoint is a bless in such situations. It's way more smooth experience, even though that trackpoint has its buggy stuff.

The times I tried other laptops it felt so much different and difficult, I carried a wireless mini-mouse for that.

Clips are not so fragile. I have disassembled my P14s gen 2 wtih AMD on first day because i wanted Intel AX210 wifi instead of realtek. Two fingernails broken, because i don't have tools, but with plastic tools it should be easy (here is video https://youtu.be/K_lJcciszsw).

Big problem for me is USB-C. I don't like small, fragile connectors directly soldered on motherboard. USB-A is on separate board. I don't know why USB-C has no separate board.

Trackpoint on AMD models has terrible in linux support. Sample rate of trackpoint is max 40Hz, because it's in fallback mode (PS/2 protocol). Touchpad can't be disabled in BIOS and low rate is because is muxed with trackpoint to single PS/2 interface.

S0ix don't work. No opportunistic sleep. Minimal power usage on battery with AMD-5850u, LCD at minimum brightness (4k panel) is 3W. Standard power usage while i am working is 3.5-4.5W.

Unless other brands adopt something similar to trackpoint, they're all useless laptops to me. I even use a trackpoint keyboard for my desktop setup.

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