Lenovo, give me a break (key)
Thomas Hampel
11 January 2014Hey, I've got a new Thinkpad...
more powerful than the previous one of course. Setting it up with all the tools I need took a bid of time, but finally its done.
I'm going to write more about the tools in another article, this one is for the Thinkpad itself.
Although I am happy with the machine overall, there are a few drawbacks, one of them being the keyboard.
We all know and love keyboard shortcuts in the Notes client as they allow us to be a lot faster than using a mouse or touch panel - Notes 9.0.x has a few more.
Compared to my previous Thinkpad, the keyboard layout has slightly changed, some say its fantastic - and it really is when it comes to the 'normal' typing.
Frustration starts when working with special keys who are not positioned where you expect them to be, especially when being used to another layout.
Here are two examples.
Example #1 - having the INSERT key right next to the DELETE key turned out not to be funny.
When you are used to hit "POS1" to get to the top of your source code it is annoying to have the DELETE key positioned exactly at the same place...
Bad if you have had some source code selected...
yes I know, CTRL+Z will undo everything, but its always this annoying moment when you think something got lost.
Example #2 - Developers and administrators remember the CTRL + BREAK shortcut to stop an ongoing operation, e.g. stop a long running agent, or some other operation that takes a long time.
Imagine this moment late at night where you hit CTRL and cant find the BREAK key? no you are not blind, its Lenovo's fault!
Some ThinkPad models incl. the one I've got, dont have all keys of a standard keyboard, so instead of using CTRL + BREAK , you'll have to use CTRL + FN + "B"
**Arrrgggghhhh**
Dear Lenovo... if you skip some of the standard keys, or if you decide to share them with other keys, please label them accordingly like you did with F3 to F12.
However, I'm far from signing an online petition to request a break key from Lenovo.
It might just take a couple of days to get used to that new keyboard layout and its special key positions. #learningcurve
1.) Lenovo, give me a break (key)
My T530 just needs Fn + B which is quite handy if you remember.
I do like the Lenovos a lot, a bit big but i run it with 16GB of memory ( I use lots of VMs ) and love that I can have an affordable ( retrofit ) SSD and a large HDD by ditching the DVD drive. I also have a USB DVD drive for the very occasional time that is handy.
I like the docking stations with the Dual monitor outputs too, I was always frustrated trying to do dual monitors with my MBP
I have the large battery pack too, it sticks out of the back of the machine but it is worth it.
Backilght keyboard is worth the extra money
The charger that comes with the 530 is HUGE. I wouldn't pay for the travel charger - it is far too fiddly and disappointingly the integrated USB charger ( nice idea ) is 0.5 amp output i.e. low powered. I did find that the charger that comes with the docks is a much better size than the unit that comes with the actual laptop sop I swapped them.
Amusingly they seem to be the defacto choice for Sharepoint developers ( with 24 GB + apparently ) as the SP stack needs huge memory resources. They think I am joking when I describe my Domino demo server ( with directory, ldap, web, database ) running on a 1.5GB VM :-)