I'm using a Thinkpad T430, at the moment. I can live with the chicklets, although the surface on these is a touch too slippery for me -- my fingers too easily find the edges of the keys, upon occasion.
However, the frustrating part is that some keys occasionally fail to register. Left shift being one of them; some of my ampersands turn into sevens (and, it just dropped the n in "into") -- particularly frustrating when I mean to background a command.
The "God we all miss them", "real" keyboard on my W520 does not exhibit this.
This T430 does have the backlit keyboard; I understand it's from the parts supplier (I forget which, offhand) that tends to have more "wobble" in their keys. That may be part of it.
People focus SO much on the internals of these machines. For fuck's sake, start by putting good keyboards and displays in them. I don't care how fast it runs, if it's a pain to use and its ergonomics slow me down.
I don't mind "cheaper", "thinner", "cooler" (style), whatever laptop designs. I DO mind the trend towards that being the only thing I can buy.
I don't have a T25, yet, but I may. And I hope there's a T26 or whatever they call it, and so on.
(And then, I'll dream about an open BIOS and a machine that is really mine, in terms of its computational functionality.)
I'm just like you, I prefer a good keyboard, mouse and screen over lightness and thinness. That's why I went with the T25 instead of waiting for the 8th gen Intel's last year. Good keyboard, a minimal window manager and I'm the most efficient. But I think we're in minority.
However, the frustrating part is that some keys occasionally fail to register. Left shift being one of them; some of my ampersands turn into sevens (and, it just dropped the n in "into") -- particularly frustrating when I mean to background a command.
The "God we all miss them", "real" keyboard on my W520 does not exhibit this.
This T430 does have the backlit keyboard; I understand it's from the parts supplier (I forget which, offhand) that tends to have more "wobble" in their keys. That may be part of it.
People focus SO much on the internals of these machines. For fuck's sake, start by putting good keyboards and displays in them. I don't care how fast it runs, if it's a pain to use and its ergonomics slow me down.
I don't mind "cheaper", "thinner", "cooler" (style), whatever laptop designs. I DO mind the trend towards that being the only thing I can buy.
I don't have a T25, yet, but I may. And I hope there's a T26 or whatever they call it, and so on.
(And then, I'll dream about an open BIOS and a machine that is really mine, in terms of its computational functionality.)