I bought my first ThinkPad (the classic ThinkPad 600) in 1998. I immediately decided it was wonderful and swore I'd never use another brand of computer again.
There was a time after that when they just kept getting better and better: the A30p with a beautiful 1600x1200 IPS display, and then that same display in the slimmed-down and faster T60p.
I also bought a bunch of old beaters to use as test machines and what not: 750's, 755's, a 360, and I was so happy when I tracked down a 701c with the butterfly keyboard.
Then for a while you could get used working A30p's in good condition for $300 or so. Did I mention the 1600x1200 IPS display? :-)
I love the TrackPoint [1] and those great displays, and even better, all the machines had the same great keyboard! When other laptop manufacturers were fiddling with this layout and that, every ThinkPad had the same exact keyboard, and it was a good one too. I could move from one ThinkPad to another without thinking about it.
The poll itself is gone, but the comments on the blog post are still there. The poll had all sorts of layout tweaks - moving various keys around in an A-B-C-D test - just the kind of thing a keyboard designer would want to do.
Then the new keyboards started coming along. Commonly used keys were moved around, and the F1-F2 keys were jammed into a solid tight row with no gaps between the groups of four keys. These gaps (between F4-F5 and F8-F9) are what afforded easy touch typing on these keys that are so far away from the home row.
Trust me, if you're reaching for Fn+F5 (wireless settings), you don't want to hit Fn+F4 (standby) by mistake. With the old keyboards, that's never a problem. There's a nice gap between F4 and F5 and you don't have to look at the keys to hit the right one. With the new one, good luck. (Oddly enough, the ThinkPad X1 and X1 Carbon do have little gaps here even though they follow the new layout otherwise. But the other newer models, no such luck. And the X1 keyboards are not compatible with other models.)
Many die-hard ThinkPad fans hated the new keyboards, not because of the "island" design but because of these frivolous layout changes.
Entrepreneurs, read the comments on that post for a lesson in how to discourage your most avid supporters. :-(
Edit: this comment on that post was insightful:
> I bet the recent supposed user tests also didn't include a significant number of dedicated, old-timer ThinkPad programmers, otherwise you'd made more of an effort mentioning this in the article, and the outcome would most likely have been different. Rather, it must have consisted mainly of random people off the street who're used to cheap laptops with keyboard layouts changing with every model. So surely they can't be bothered with yet another weird layout and thus mark it as "fine".
There was a time after that when they just kept getting better and better: the A30p with a beautiful 1600x1200 IPS display, and then that same display in the slimmed-down and faster T60p.
I also bought a bunch of old beaters to use as test machines and what not: 750's, 755's, a 360, and I was so happy when I tracked down a 701c with the butterfly keyboard.
Then for a while you could get used working A30p's in good condition for $300 or so. Did I mention the 1600x1200 IPS display? :-)
I love the TrackPoint [1] and those great displays, and even better, all the machines had the same great keyboard! When other laptop manufacturers were fiddling with this layout and that, every ThinkPad had the same exact keyboard, and it was a good one too. I could move from one ThinkPad to another without thinking about it.
Then, they hired a keyboard designer.
You could see the trouble coming in this poll:
http://blog.lenovo.com/design/keyboard-layout-survey-details...
The poll itself is gone, but the comments on the blog post are still there. The poll had all sorts of layout tweaks - moving various keys around in an A-B-C-D test - just the kind of thing a keyboard designer would want to do.
Then the new keyboards started coming along. Commonly used keys were moved around, and the F1-F2 keys were jammed into a solid tight row with no gaps between the groups of four keys. These gaps (between F4-F5 and F8-F9) are what afforded easy touch typing on these keys that are so far away from the home row.
Trust me, if you're reaching for Fn+F5 (wireless settings), you don't want to hit Fn+F4 (standby) by mistake. With the old keyboards, that's never a problem. There's a nice gap between F4 and F5 and you don't have to look at the keys to hit the right one. With the new one, good luck. (Oddly enough, the ThinkPad X1 and X1 Carbon do have little gaps here even though they follow the new layout otherwise. But the other newer models, no such luck. And the X1 keyboards are not compatible with other models.)
Many die-hard ThinkPad fans hated the new keyboards, not because of the "island" design but because of these frivolous layout changes.
Lenovo's response:
http://blog.lenovo.com/products/why-you-should-give-in-to-th...
Entrepreneurs, read the comments on that post for a lesson in how to discourage your most avid supporters. :-(
Edit: this comment on that post was insightful:
> I bet the recent supposed user tests also didn't include a significant number of dedicated, old-timer ThinkPad programmers, otherwise you'd made more of an effort mentioning this in the article, and the outcome would most likely have been different. Rather, it must have consisted mainly of random people off the street who're used to cheap laptops with keyboard layouts changing with every model. So surely they can't be bothered with yet another weird layout and thus mark it as "fine".
[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=love+trackpoint