Really wish they would get rid of the numpad layout and center that touchpad or make it bigger. Really bothers me that the touchpad isn’t centered, makes it awkward.
Maybe I'm weird, but when I bought my current laptop 2 years ago I specifically looked for one with a numpad, as I occasionally need to insert numbers into spreadsheets (working on replacing this workflow but I have a feeling it's still going to be manual number input overall, and some documents I extract numbers from are not copy-paste-able).
I found it convenient to have the numpad available at all times and the muscle memory I developed while typing on it makes the process less frustrating than looking all the time at the number row on the main keyboard body. As I understand it, the laptops with no numpad have a toggle that turns keys on the right side into a numpad, don't remember how exactly, might be vendor specific, some even have numeric markings on those keys, but the keys are laid out slanted, not in a square grid like the real numpad, so it's less precise that knowing you can feel the bump on the no. 5 key and to get to the others you just have to move straight up/down/left/right.
The fact that the touchpad is not centered never bothered me at all; I use a macbook for work, which is centered, and I felt no difference in hand position or comfort. In fact, the inverted position of CTRL and FN were (and still are) way more frustrating to deal with, even the switch to ISO keyboard from ANSI was less frustrating that that, but the off center touchpad/keys, never.
Sure, numpad is great for data entry. But that's a rare specialist use case, especially for a mobile laptop where you can't use an external numpad (since data entry is usually copying data from some device or paper)
This is exactly the use case that laptops, docking stations, and multi-use ports are meant to solve. Not everyone wants or needs everything crammed into their portable machine and some people have weird needs. So laptops should have the features everyone needs and then allow you to plug in your own features as needed. Like Ethernet, floppies (they’re still in use, believe it), disk drives, etc.
But some people get very mad when a laptop is released that doesn’t have exactly what they need and don’t want to hear that there is a plugin that enables that use case. While others get very mad that there are extra things on their laptops.
right under touch typing right hand, J has a bump, activated with Fn. Slanted feels good for right hand - it grows from shoulder. Squire grid works best with wide keyboard (like traditional numpad).
Head naturally centers on the screen, it helps if palms lay on center too.
I've never expressed this wish anywhere before and I'm pretty sure it will never happen[0] but, anyway, here it goes: Can laptop manufacturers please standardize their laptop<>keyboard hardware interface, so that we can finally have custom laptop keyboards? (Think ErgoDox for ThinkPads.) Actually, I'd already be happy if only Lenovo did that with their ThinkPads…
[0] Especially not given the current trend for laptops to become thinner and thinner.
Good idea but agreed that it would never happen given the trends.
What I'm really disappointed by is laptop manufactures pretty much only go two routes now on laptop keyboard layouts: 1. The one with numpad on wider laptops like this one, 2. The compact one with smaller arrow keys and no nav keys (Home/End/Pgup/Pgdown) in a reasonable place. (typically hidden behind Fn+arrows)
I used to have this old laptop, Dell Latitude E6410, that had pretty much the perfect laptop keyboard for me to write code with. It looks like this [1]. I use Home/End keys extensively while coding and it's part of muscle memory to reach for them directly vertically above arrow keys. This is the only laptop with a keyboard layout like this that I know of. (the full size arrow keys also help)
I also use Home/End a lot while writing code, and interestingly (at least to me!) I've become totally accustomed to using the Fn+arrows. It's like having to hit Shift to type curly braces and other common symbols—it became completely automatic and subconscious after a while.
Now that laptop tech is well established and single board computers (like the raspberry pi) are common, I wonder if there time is right for someone to create a laptop standard similar to what ATX was for desktops.
It would be great to have a standard chassis that could hold an upgradeable pi-like board and a custom keyboard.
https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform MNT Reform is a step in that direction (+ open hardware!) The CPU and RAM are on an easily replaced SO-DIMM, so you could have a variety of system configurations use the same laptop-peripheral-complex.
My hope is that something to that effect comes about with the growing use of SO-DIMM-like form factors for SBCs (e.g. RPi Compute Module, SOPINE, etc.). Unfortunately nobody seems to be cooperating on a standard pinout yet, but if we can get to the point where they're interchangeable that'd be a boon for all sorts of things (be it popping a module or two into a laptop or popping dozens of 'em into a server).
They might have chosen that due to their intended audience. The numpad is pretty handy for many professional applications. Let's say you are using Blender - there are many keys bound to the numpad. You can work without those, but it's awkward. Not to mention applications requiring lots of numeric input.
You could plug in an external numpad(or better yet, a bluetooth one). But this is a laptop, it's one more thing to carry.
I personally don't require a numpad these days - I'm typing this on a mechanic keyboard without one. Have I missed it occasionally? Yes. Would I prefer a laptop without one? Yes. Give me more keyboard real state and a better layout.
Now, the off-center small touchpad is the biggest offender here, IMHO. This is a design reminiscent of early 2010 cheap 15.6" laptops. Maybe it's a good touchpad. But I am already prejudiced against it, because it looks like the old synaptics (or the even worse competitor I forgot the name). They don't provide any details in the specs, they just say "multitouch".
Strongly agree. I was scrolling down the page thinking excitedly "hey, this might be nice!" until I saw the keyboard and touchpad then my brain did a "record skip sound" and it was off-putting enough for me that I just said "whelp" and closed the tab.
Unfortunately, numpad keyboards and 16:9 are the most common, cheapest options. They would have serious trouble sourcing non-common keyboards and 16:10 displays from, well, anywhere.
For the price, I think one could live with it. High end workstations from HP/Dell (their own design, their own suppliers) went for $5,000+ a decade ago. They stopped doing that recently.
Nowadays only Apple seems to have enough pull to get uncommon features on their machines.
Yeah it seems strange, like is this better for right handed people or left handed people when using the touchpad somehow I feel like it would depend on whether you use your right hand or left hand... I know in my case on a macbook pro, I use my right hand to mouse around and that is a stretch for my hands to reach down and to the left from my right hand which is ackward... as a vim user I value the idea of moving my hands as little as possible so the touchpad is definitely better then a mouse but still a last resort feature... still if it's further from my hand i dont' see how that could be good... but having it on the left side maybe if i was left handed the stretch would be somehow more optimized... but seems odd most people are right handed right? At least 70% from one google search indicates this is the case so yeah it makes no sense to me why a touchpad should not be centered or if anything biased towards the right side or ideally a configuration option...
I've just always practiced mousing with both right and left hands. It's good to have some balance in one's life. :-p
(I follow this philosophy in my martial arts as well. Which turned out well enough when on my black belt test I accidentally did all my techniques lefty and still passed!)
Yeah, other than keyboard/touchpad this looks perfect (especially matte screen and really good RAM). My current laptop, a Dell Latitude E7440, has many shortcomings but got this right and I have a lot of trouble finding a replacement because I don't want to give up on all that:
* centered touchpad (edit: well, kinda)
* touchpad with physical buttons below _and above_, including a _middle button_
* trackpad, though I don't use it much
* no numpad so there's more room for the rest of the keyboard (it's a 14" laptop) and it feels great
* arrows slightly out of the keyboard layout, with adjacent page up/down
* keys feel great, but I guess that's common now
Some more notes:
* old-school docking system, which I prefer over usb C and such
* (this one's a con) weird home/end button position, but nothing serious
I found it convenient to have the numpad available at all times and the muscle memory I developed while typing on it makes the process less frustrating than looking all the time at the number row on the main keyboard body. As I understand it, the laptops with no numpad have a toggle that turns keys on the right side into a numpad, don't remember how exactly, might be vendor specific, some even have numeric markings on those keys, but the keys are laid out slanted, not in a square grid like the real numpad, so it's less precise that knowing you can feel the bump on the no. 5 key and to get to the others you just have to move straight up/down/left/right.
The fact that the touchpad is not centered never bothered me at all; I use a macbook for work, which is centered, and I felt no difference in hand position or comfort. In fact, the inverted position of CTRL and FN were (and still are) way more frustrating to deal with, even the switch to ISO keyboard from ANSI was less frustrating that that, but the off center touchpad/keys, never.