[smoothgrips]

> [T]he quality and design of recent Thinkpads has gone utterly to shit. The new keyboards are particularly atrocious.

I've never owned a Thinkpad until recently. I purchased a Thinkpad T450s and I love it. I also think the keyboard is quite nice as well. Now I'm curious how the older Thinkpads were. Were they considerably better? Did I buy a bad product and not even know?

[tsm]

Yes, in my opinion the Thinkpad peaked somewhere around the T43 or the IBM-made T60 (which was also made by Lenovo). Good keyboard layout, travel distance, spring distance. Even silly stuff like the shape of the key and the precise type of plastic were somehow better.

And everything apart from the keyboard was solid too. How many non-Macbooks can be picked up by any edge or corner? How many laptops have a metal hinge for the screen? A magnesium rollcage inside? Clever drains that divert water out of your keyboard and out holes on the bottom, all without damaging the electronics? Easily user-accessible battery, RAM, HDD…even more advanced components like the screen and the wifi card?

[PeCaN]

Pretty sure the T60 was designed and manufactured entirely by Lenovo but they had permission to use the IBM logo on it.

Nobody makes laptops like IBM used to :-( I know they seem to strongly prefer low-volume high-margin industries but I really would like to see what they could do today.

[rconti]

Had a T60 but didn't know about the drain. That's really cool.

[Retr0spectrum]

They aren't that bad compared to other brands, but compared to what they used to be, they are quite a bit worse.

This is partly because travel distance has been reduced to make devices thinner, and also because of perplexing layout choices.

Edit: I should probably point out that I was just talking about the keyboard here.

[neogodless]

The W540 has really awkwardly placed Ctrl and Fn keys, and the trackpad is terrible. Not sure what the timeline is between W520 and T450. But I do know that the W520s were the predecessor to the W540, and it didn't have all those issues.

[stan_rogers]

The old keyboard wasn't merely "quite nice". Apart from the short travel (which was still quite long by notebook standards and rather easy to get used to), it had a feel very like a good full-sized desktop keyboard. No, it wasn't a Model M or anything, but it was head and shoulders above most of the crop. I used the old USB Thinkpad external keyboard with my desktop as well as my laptop (when it was on the docking station). Unfortunately, it's been discontinued as well.

[TheCowboy]

This is like asking for people's personal religious experiences.

I upgraded from a T60P last year, and opted for a used W520 (circa. 2011). The W520 has been good so far, but I should have gotten something a little lighter. That was the last year before the keyboard went down the road of shedding functionality. It's not just the island-style keys, but moving and discarding keys isn't that beneficial to me.

My T60P survived a lot of abuse. I've had to replace some parts and the cpu fan, but it was easier than having to upgrade to a new machine. I would have kept using it a little longer if not for the 4gb ram cap on it.

Current models just seem too much like Mac "Me Too" machines. Becoming too much like a Mac and people have an easy choice of just getting a Mac instead.

[c22]

I recently got a t540p and the keyboard feels like mushy crap, but it has a ten-key and trackpoint and it's backlit so at least I can find the weirdly spaced keys in the dark. Anyway the screen is fantastic and the rest of the build quality is nice so I'm not complaining, they're just not what they used to be.

[bnolsen]

I personally much prefer the newer thinkpad keyboards to the older one. I however, don't consider either keyboard to be good enough to do serious work on. For that I have a real ergo keyboard and real mouse.

[Synaesthesia]

The fact that their keyboards are spill-proof is one of the best aspects