Lenovo has removed the TrackPoint nub from new ThinkPad laptops
pcworld.com
pcworld.com
I recently sold a Z13 because it had so many quirks (low battery life due to OLED, trackpad and trackpoint were crap, bluetooth barely worked through the dense metal chassis, display didn't fold down 180 degrees, felt heavy af).
I got a T14s instead. Holy crap, it is so much better. Feels lighter, the touchpad and trackpoint are great, 500nits low-energy display is "ok" but battery can last all day. I use the trackpoint all the time (partly due to the touchpad drifting for some reason, and partly just to have a more precise pointer for fine work). The only downside is the lack of more USB-C ports.
A random upside if you order it with Ubuntu: it comes with Secure Boot set up correctly. But then a downside: Linux kernel prevents hibernate from working if Secure Boot is enabled, unless you set up an encrypted swap and jump through hoops to set up the bootloader right (and of course it's not set up on Ubuntu). I can't believe it's still such a pain to get otherwise-standard laptop functionality with Linux.
X- was always ultraportable business laptops, essentially the smaller version of the T-, lots of connectivity, conservative design etc.
T- was the standard sized laptops built to business standards- usually built the best and lasted the longest, with a conservative design and port selection.
W- was the desktop replacement class, the super-amped variant of the T-, compromising portability for power.
Everything else was confused, experimental, sub-tier, and the X1 muddied the branding of the other X-series..
In the event that X1-series ThinkPads lose their trackpoints, I think those who are interested in the X1 Carbon are more likely to consider laptops from other manufacturers than to jump to the T-series.
This is not about the death of the nub, but about how far the Thinkpad brand name can be diluted.
> Removing the trackpoint buttons altogether (walked that back)
> Switching from 16:10 to 16:9 (walked that back)
> For some reason, moving the fan exhaust to the right side instead of the left (made people's hands hot when using a mouse so they walked that back)
I'm surprised the bigger news regarding this laptop isn't just how ugly the thing is. It looks like one of those huge $200 Toshiba laptops you'd see at Wal-Mart in 2010. I can't even begin to imagine how much money Lenovo has wasted on changing their tooling to spite customers and then changing it back when they realize they need customers, almost every generation.
> How many times do we need to teach you this lesson, old man?!?
For reference, I own and use the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7 for many years, and the ThinkPad X220 for many years before that. The keyboard layout on both of these are more agreeable to me, albeit not perfect (e.g. X1C7 dropped the Context Menu key, which I actually use on computers where it's available; X1C7 doesn't have dedicated volume up/down keys unlike the X220).
I detest the 20-year-long trend of computer manufacturers messing with laptop and desktop keyboard layouts, chasing after sleekness or the latest fashion trends to the detriment of typists. I love laptop keyboards that differ from desktop keyboards as little as possible. I love standard 104-key keyboards on desktop and hate anything that messes this up. These details matter a lot to me as a touch typist, and as some who uses those keys that many manufacturers have implicitly deemed "useless" by their removal (e.g. Home, End, Right Ctrl, Right Windows, Context Menu).
Back to the article though, I used TrackPoint a lot on X220 because it functioned better than the touchpad. The X1C7 has TrackPoint but the motion feels unnatural to me, so I end up using the touchpad instead (which has improved over the X220). I was able to use the center button as middle click on X220 but there is no software to support that feature on the X1C7; maybe this is related to the TrackPoint vendor changing from Synaptics to Elan. Either way, I wish Lenovo made a ThinkPad that has both a good TrackPoint and a good touchpad; they were clearly capable of doing it in the past but have regressed.
Middle-click paste is widely used in Linux, and while I tried mouse emulators with limited success, it sure is good to have a physical button at your thumb. With a tiling window manager, you can copy (by visual select depending on the application) and paste (middle-click) without ever leaving your home row across multiple windows. This is a serious work flow tool in REPL.
Moreover the new haptic feedback they got on button-less TrackPads have motors etc which are not as reliable as million-click-tested ThinkPads' physical buttons.
Laptops are the tools of our trade, and unfortunately, we cannot make too many compromises, especially for the sake of trendy aesthetics. If ThinkPads want to be MacBooks, then we might as well buy MacBooks; indeed, many of us already do. Almost a decade ago, Lenovo already made a similar mistake with 2nd generation Carbon X1 (and some T series) and they had to revert back. Having a diversity in the market place is important, and I surely hope Lenovo keeps ThinkPads as uniquely performant as they have been since the IBM days.
Also, F Dell for not putting power/sleep lights on their laptops anymore. It was the only reliable of way of knowing whether its safe for me to put my laptop in the bag without cooking itself to death.
Yes! It makes me crazy that product designers continue removing helpful LED indicators users rely on - all to maybe a save couple pennies per unit. Other offenders are power supply bricks not having a small LED lit when it's receiving power and Ethernet switches not having RJ-45 sockets with the standard-forever dual orange/green indicators. Sometimes power bricks are on extension cords or power strips which get turned off or kicked loose. Yes, users could open the laptop, log in and finish some pending Windows update just to confirm it's still charging. But that's stupid.
Just this week I needed a cheap, generic 5-port unmanaged switch and almost clicked buy without noticing they'd used connectors without indicators. I quickly found another unit with all the same features and (probably) the same chip and board, which did have LEDs - and it was $5 less! Yes, I could walk to wherever the cable goes to check that the device is on, active and what speed it's at but that's stupid.
Relatedly, there is a lesser circle of hell reserved for product designers of consumer devices intended for daily desktop or nighttime bedside use, like wireless phone charging stands, who put an LED on it that is so fucking BRIGHT it could give a sunburn. Some of them go for extra credit by making the Lighthouse of the Gods BLINK like aircraft landing lights - when indicating normal use - not an exception state.
I do hope other manufacturers will fill this gap. Lenovo's quality has been going downhill.
Typing this on a Lenovo Thinkpad P16 gen2
I am keyboard focused, and mostly use the Trackpoint to change window focus or place a text cursor. I would prefer a desktop mouse for any precision pointer movement such as in photo editing or vector drawing.
The biggest frustration I've had is plenty of regressions in how Linux, Xorg, and/or Wayland handle the Trackpoint input. The calibration, acceleration, etc. can go completely crazy after some software update and it is basically impossible to bring it back the way it was using the available GUI desktop settings manager. Worse, this happens differently for different Trackpoint hardware instances, so in a household with multiple Thinkpads and external keyboards, muscle memory doesn't carry from one machine to another.
I also like getting scroll wheel emulation via Trackpad gestures, but the drivers seem to get into weird states of ignoring inputs on one or both. I don't know if this is some ham-fisted attempt at "ignore input while typing" that generalized into "ignore input during other inputs" and gets it wrong. I'll see moments where scroll gestures stop working, or others where the Trackpoint seems to be unresponsive.
Another plus at the time was the strong Linux support, but Dell has better Linux support.
Also to be fair, I use a MacBook Pro as my laptop these days, and mostly use a desktop computer 95% of the time, because desktop computers I haven’t been brainwashed to think that laptops are better than desktops and prefer their superiority.
Not sure reactions to every claim others make as some attempt to normalized opinion is useful. Kind of vain of you to think they were obliging you to feel so much given a banal personal expression. Go take a cortisol stabilizer and jerk off for 8 hours to waifus
Maybe I'm getting older, or lazier, but these days I usually carry around a small mouse just in case I need to do some pointer navigation. Can't stand using a touchpad and always disable it.
Good.
The trackpoint was great simply because I didn't need to move my hands anywhere else when using it, could keep my fingers all on the home row and still move pointer.
There are external Lenovo USB keyboards with Trackpoints. If Lenovo wants to copy Apple, they could make a detachable $300 MagicTrackPoint keyboard for 2-in-1 Lunar Lake devices.
If it had a T480 motherboard instead it would've held up a lot better.
(also, a ThinkPad without a trackpoint is de facto, even if not from a legal perspective, false advertising, just like those dual-core i7's.)
The place I really want the trackpoint is on my Glove80 or Kinesis Advantage, with these ergo desktop split keyboards I really never want to move my hand to the mouse, yet there’s no easy way to get a trackpoint. For a while I lived with an Apple touchpad in between my glove80 splits but it doesn’t seem any quicker or more ergonomic than a good mouse, although it is a bit more compact. I would love to see a stand alone trackpoint stick “mouse” that could easily be adapted to a desktop ergo keyboard. The happy hacking keyboard has a variant with a trackpoint, but it’s hardly ergonomic and is missing various modifiers.
I'd like that too. I've seen a few other split custom keyboards that offer options for a trackpoint, ball or game controller thumb stick in the thumb panel position of a split. I think I recall seeing something like that as an option on a Moonlander keyb but it may have been someone's custom add-on or a mock-up. I think the reason there's not a standardized add-on is that the case edge geometry of these ergo splits varies so much between models.
Over the years I've purchased a few small, standalone modules with a ball or stick to put in the middle between the split halves - and I've seen lots of photos of people doing the same. I never use them very long. While they kind of work, the control needs to be tucked in close right near the thumb and it also needs to be attached to that side of the split so it moves as a unit.
Another complication is that I think a lot of us like granular control over tilt angles and that means the 'leaf' holding the thumb control needs to fit into the overall adjustable angle scheme so it can be secured at an ideal angle and distance offset below the main panel. And 'ideal' will vary per user hand size, mobility and preference.
As a related aside, I recently learned there are now high-end game controller thumb sticks which have adjustable height and stops. This isn't just telescoping stick height above the ball but actually moving the entire ball up and down inside the controller. On some models it can be changed in-place by turning the outer ring surrounding the stick clockwise or counter-clockwise.
Sadly they sold out of their first production run and haven't released a sequel, and even the one I have I had to have shipped to a cousin in the US because they didn't sell it internationally (I actually buy all my non-Mac laptops in the US because I can't stand the crackpot British keyboard layout).
I guess the writing is on the wall, and Lenovo has been slowly decontenting the ThinkPad, starting with the keyboards. I don't know that there is any brand that differentiates itself on premium hardware, other than Razer but their Linux support is iffy and their battery life an afterthought.
Oh, and I really liked trackballs back when thin-and-light wasn't such an obsession and Powerbooks had them like my 180c.
I would get an ultimate hacking keyboard with a trackpoint adapter. But the keyboard and the adapter is way too expensive.
Too bad they don't have the courage to bring back some models without the touch pad... it's inches of wasted space.
https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-TrackPoint-Keyboard-4... (if the link someday dies, it's Lenovo Model #4Y40X49493)
Like many on HN, I'm keyboard-obsessive, preferring customized split mechanical keybs for desktop daily driving. But I have a few of these Thinkpad wireless keyboards too because they're small, portable and, with the Trackpoint, ideal for places a larger keyboard and mouse won't fit or isn't always needed. I keep one in our home theater, tucked in my lounger's armrest for when I need to enter an app account/password into an Android TV streaming box or game console (it's insane that most streaming apps still don't receive input from the device's system-wide voice typing).
I keep another one in our arcade room where there's a custom arcade cabinet for emulation with a PC inside. With all the arcade controls on the cabinet, there's not much room to put a keyboard when I need to install a new emulator or tweak something. Next to that I have a virtual pinball cabinet with another PC inside. The Thinkpad wireless is great for configuring stuff without opening the cabinets, messing with wires or a separate mouse. It's small, thin and light but has a full standard PC layout with Ctrl, Alt, Win, Esc and direct function keys yet doesn't feel awful like so many portable mini-keyboards. It also has auto-off, holds a charge for a long time, stores the USB RF dongle internally and falls back to wired so it always works.
I would say mainly IBM and Lenovo have the positioning correct as well as on some models TrackPoint buttons.
So if you had tried most of dell's attempts and tought it was useless, that's because it was even though its a simular implimentation :)
I would certainly buy a Thinkpad T14 with the classic keyboard layout << T420 >> in a heart beat... << even if it had to be thinker >> standard price not x2 mess that was the Thinkpad 25.
(( I currently have 6 working thinkpads ))
instead the trackpoint nub could have become a new power button + fingerprint button. just like the TouchID on the macbook.
Its a missed opportunity to keep the brand and update the functionality.
What I find much much more of a problem is the awful keyboards on ThinkPads these days. My T490s was the last with a serviceable keyboard. My new T14s has too little travel. It's awful to work on. Strange enough it hasn't become thinner due to the crap keyboard because at the same time they made the screen a lot thicker.
Ps I don't like trackpads either. They're ok in emergencies but usually I just bring my mouse.
I hated it when I had a macbook (from work) because it did sometimes heat up in my backpack. So I always turned it off with pmset.
I have to say though that this was firmly in the intel age, my last personal Macs were a 2010 MacBook and 2011 Mac Mini. I guess this feature works better now that they're on ARM and they can just keep one or two light cores active. But ARM macs are also more locked down so they're not an option for me. Also I really hate their hardware (too little travel on the keys, sharp edges etc). Even when they returned to the old scissor keys the key travel was too short for me.
I'm really happy with KDE these days, it gives me back choice and options on how I want my system to work. The only thing I miss from Apple is pixelmator.
It's incredible that, over a decade later, non-Apple systems have still not quite caught up. Windows does better than any of the Linux distros I've tried at handling the trackpad input, but acceleration curves still feel off and it doesn't detect two finger scrolling when the angle of my hand is too extreme.
Also I hate the sharp metal edges at the front of macbooks that leave marks on my wrists. I don't use MacBooks anymore (or Mac in general as I found it too opinionated and locked down).
Agree for the metal edges. I do not love them either. I usually put a piece of cloth below my wrist when it’s not cold enough to have a sweater :-)
I was servicable back then, but could have been better.
> The pointing stick is positioned such that the hands do not need to be removed from the home row to manipulate the mouse pointer.
> Some people find them more appealing for mobile gaming than a touchpad, because the trackpoint allows infinite movement without repositioning.
> Some users feel that pointing sticks cause less wrist strain because a user does not need to avoid resting wrists on a touchpad, which are usually located just below the keyboard.
Is there actual pressure? Does the pointstick move at all? Does it matter how hard you press on it? Or is that just psychological - you see the cursor moving and assume you are pushing against something.
That said, I use emacs and lisp so ...
but to me removing it from the thinkpad line is a mistake
the only thing they should have done is fix the drifting bug that happens once every two days
That said the choice was always nice for people who liked it so I'm sure they will be disappointed by this decision. I wonder if Lenovo had some metrics behind this decision.
Two points that other people have not mentioned:
* TrackPoint has infinite range because it controls velocity, not position. What I mean is, if you need to reach an on-screen object far away, on a touchpad you might need to flick your finger multiple times because you can't reach it in one stroke. Same with mice sometimes; you might need to lift the mouse, move back, put down the mouse, and reach again. TrackPoint does not suffer from this.
* To do drag-and-drop on TrackPoint, simply hold the desired mouse button down, do the movement on the pointing stick, then lift the mouse button - naturally just like you'd do with a mouse. Whereas to do a left-click drag-and-drop on a touchpad, you need to first do a quick tap on the touchpad (down and up), followed by a drag (down, move, up) on the touchpad; this feels unnatural and has extra latency. And I'm not even sure how you can do a right-click drag-and-drop on a touchpad without the assistance of the right TrackPoint mouse button. (Btw, Windows File Explorer allows right-drag-and-drop; it pops up a menu on the dragged file when the button is lifted. Some file managers on Linux don't allow right-drag-and-drop. And I also use right-click drag for mouse gestures in Firefox, which I heard is a feature pioneered in Opera.)
Poorly implemented clones of the device have also hurt its reputation somewhat, as a poorly implemented trackpoint is never particularly usable.
This is simply not true. The trackpoint driver will compensate for trackpoints that no longer point "true" center https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/TrackPoint#Trackpoint_moves...
Now you know someone.
P.S. The drift usually happens when you hold the nub in a particular direction for too long, or on occasion if the screen is pressing on it when closed. It's irritating, but can often be addressed (although some models are worse than others).
My partner hated using my x61, complaining that it was hard to hit anything accurately. Her laptop had a failed battery and she needed to borrow mine for a few days... a week later she replaced hers with an x61 and some 15 years later has only used a thinkpad, specifically because of the trackpoint.
While I have a regular BT travel mouse that requires NO learning curve and can easily be replaced by any other mouse.
Go check out videos of new computers users from the 90s, mice absolutely have a learning curve. (I say from the 90s because today many people likely grew up with them).
Sure you already know the mouse, so good for you. As a comfortable user of both trackpoint and mice, I'd rather use the trackpoint for almost all uses. The few things I'd prefer a mouse to trackpoint I'd also prefer something else to the mouse (e.g. 3d orientation I prefer use a spaceball like device to mouse, and for drawing I'd prefer a stylus to mouse).
A better touchpad is way more convenient.
It's just not needed anymore and the left/right click button space can be used to make the trackpad larger.
It's like Mercedes deciding not to remind you of the Gullwing every 5 minutes anymore.
If I was working at Dell, I would be flabbergasted at my competitor just throwing away one of their little advantages.
Lenovo already has other brands catering to folks who don't identify with the ThinkPad brand identity and aesthetic (e.g. the Yoga devices, where some of the premium models have been legit svelte and gorgeous; I bought my mom in law a swanky Yoga with an OLED and it's more lovely than anything Apple).
> If I was working at Dell, I would be flabbergasted at my competitor just throwing away one of their little advantages.
That was my thinking. Why would you give away what distinguishes you and gives you an identity - one with an American, Western connection - and become just another laptop company? Why buy Lenovo now?
I read a story about Apple when they fired Steve Jobs. The new management did what everyone had been pushing for years: License the OS to other manufacturers, and start shifting to PC-compatible hardware. Pretty soon, Macs went from a single physical unit with a handle on top for carrying, to a CPU box and separate CRT monitor, available from multiple brands.
But then why buy a Mac, with it's broadly incompatible OS and higher price? The marketing genius of the crowds was, of course, incompetent. When Steve Jobs came back he killed the licensing of the OS and immediately put out a fun, high-design, single-unit cheap desktop computer.
Edit: On the other hand, maybe Lenovo is smart. There can be a big controversy, lots of people talking about Lenovo, and then they can go back and forth a bit and finally put back the trackpoint.
I agree. It's dumb and seemingly incomprehensible but I finally understood why it happens after seeing it occur inside a large company with a long-successful product line with well-known signature traits. When a product and it's major features are successful enough to last literally decades, they outlive the careers of product managers, designers and marketers. Over time new people come in and work their up into positions of influence. Many times they are there because they appreciate (or even revere) the product, but they're also anxious to put their own mark on the legacy. This isn't just self-centered, they often view their role as bearing the responsibility to guide the legendary product's journey into the future.
At the same time, they didn't inherit complete knowledge of all the reasons why things got the way they are or all the things which were tried in the past. There's also the ever-present ambient need in any organization to "do things" significant enough to justify their, now senior, role along with promotions and bonuses. It's ultimately just a combination of common human behavior in the context of large, long-lasting organizations. I see it so many places in the tech I use daily - Windows is a good example as is Firefox. The current product managers and designers seem to always be removing or fucking up some lower profile but essential feature a subset of users rely on that had been good for a decade or more.
Of course, understanding it doesn't excuse that it's dumb and shouldn't happen.
The Framework feature request is here: https://community.frame.work/t/responded-any-chance-of-track...
Especially because many years ago got a Dell Inspiron line laptop, and the trackpad on that feels great to me.
[0] what's even more surprising is that in Ubuntu there's an extra package, that adds more configuration options for the Thinkpad trackpad, but even with that I couldn't really make it feel as pleasant as my old Dell.