[astorgard]

I'm on the same boat as you: my ideal laptop would be an x220/x230 on the outside with a 1440p display and a modern CPU on the inside.

I can't understand why Thinkpads are moving away from this absolutely perfect design in the name of... slickness?

Why are laptops with a minimal (or non-existing) touchpad so difficult to find? Once you start using the trackpoint your wrists feel incredibly relaxed at all times.

Why do so few vendors offer RJ45 ports? When in the lab, I find my self needing one almost daily.

Why this trend of including keyboards with shorter and shorter travel distance?

There was a campaign to bring attention to all these details a few years ago which (surprisingly!) resulted in Lenovo releasing the "Thinkpad 25 anniversary edition" [1] which ticked most (but not all) of my boxes and which is unfortunately no longer available.

Do people really prefer the new design trends? Am I out of touch with reality?

[1] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/outletus/laptops/thinkpad/think...

[pengaru]

The X220 is nowhere near an "absolutely perfect" design, it's way too wide. I still use one as my daily driver, but come on. The screen bezels are huge, the keyboard stretched to fill its wide footprint, and the power plug juts out the back where it gets stressed against the floor in any cross-legged, or other tilted back usage setting.

The X61s was far closer to an absolutely perfect design, it just needed less plastic in the chassis. Things started going downhill with the X201s in the transition to wide aspect ratio displays, and X220/X230 arrived at full retard on that trajectory.

[astorgard]

You are completely right. The X61s is a better design (I happen to own one too!), I completely forgot about it as, due to its much slower CPU, I must have put it away somewhere in the attic many years ago :)

[sorokod]

...slow and 32 bit. Got one too.

[pengaru]

> ...slow and 32 bit. Got one too.

Slow by modern standards, being pre-Nehalem, yes. But not 32-bit, the X61s tops out at a 1.8Ghz c2d L7700, which is 64-bit:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/32243/i...

  Intel® Turbo Boost Technology: No
  Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology: No
  Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x): Yes
  Intel® 64: Yes
  Instruction Set: 64-bit
  Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology: Yes
  Intel® Demand Based Switching: No

[javajosh]

I honestly love overhearing you discuss your perfect computers, because it doesn't seem impossible that you might get your wish! One really interesting possibility is to recycle the X61s chassis and use modern PCBs, chips, and peripherals to get you what you want. Another possibility is the creation of a PC ecosystem similar to the "Red Camera System" where yes, your m2 module costs $5k instead of $500, but it it comes in a machined aluminum module that fits perfectly with the rest of your tricked out customized laptop.

[numpad0]

Likelihood of people actually using products they buy is overestimated, I think.

Lots of games on Steam has achievements for extremely simple tasks, such as launching the game for the first time or playing it for five minutes, and popularity of those is typically around 82.5% and 75% respectively among audiences for most popular titles.

IOW, 17.5% of PC game enthusiasts pay for a game and immediately put it on a shelf and don’t even double click on the icon. 25% reaches past the loading screen. Of all purchasers, maybe 10% reaches the final boss or end of the storyline. Potentially less.

A person who has issues with a mainstream laptop for its lack of an Ethernet port few years into ownership, who knows how many of those exist in the whole world?

[astorgard]

I would like to think that there are *dozens* of us!

At least, many people in HN and most people in /r/thinkpad seem to agree! :)

[pedrocr]

The X1 nano is the same width and height as a X220 but half the thickness and significantly lighter. The X13 is very close to that too on the lower end. What would you change in those?

Having been a user of the old X lines throughout the years the current X/T and X1 lines seem like a definite improvement to me. And I also use the trackpoint exclusively.

[astorgard]

I own both the x230 and the x395 (which is, externally, almost the same as the x13) and I can definitely feel a difference when typing on the much more comfortable x230.

It's mainly due to two factors: 1) thanks to having a very small touchpad, the keyboard is closer to the edge and I feel much less strain on the lower part of the arm, near my wrists, which becomes more apparent after long coding sessions; and 2) the key travel is much longer and typing feels "better" (I make far less mistakes).

Also, because the x395 is almost half the thickness, they could not fit a bigger battery (which is definitely my main complaint on these newer machines).

Don't get me wrong, the "X" series is great and I will probably get the latest version when I need a replacement *but* I'm sad they make these sacrifices in the name of "design".

[kitsunesoba]

Have been using an X1 Nano for a few weeks now and so far it's been quite nice. Light as a feather, decent keyboard/trackpoint/trackpad, reasonably battery life, and the 16:10 screen ratio works so much better on this size than 16:9.

Feels quite well built despite the low weight, too. It doesn't sacrifice on solidness to achieve its weight.

[skrtskrt]

The X1 Nano seems like a great buy. I think I will hold out for 9th gen X1 Carbons to drop in price, however, because I want to bump up the RAM to 32gb and keep the laptop for a long time, lessen the chance of my workloads outgrowing the machine. Or I will wait for the T series to get the 11th gen Intel chips and 16:10 screen

Plus the extra battery life in the Carbon. But the X1 Nano beats my 2020 intel macbook air in battery life from the benchmarks I've seen, which could be longer I have not found lacking

[kitsunesoba]

Yeah I made the same consideration. Carbon G9 has some distinct advantages but I needed the laptop sooner than later (who knows how long it'll take the G9 to come down to reasonable prices in the current environment) so I went ahead and bought the Nano.

[skrtskrt]

Yeah given a time constraint I would make the same decision easily.

[yoz-y]

I think there is definitely space to at least offer some SKUs with all that, albeit at a high markup (kinda like the Mac Pro).

However I think that yes, most people (including me) prefer the new to the old. Eg.: I dislike full keyboards because it shifts my hands to a side and moves the mouse further away. I tried track points but I find touchpads superior. I don’t need an RJ45 because even if I wanted to use it, I’d much rather have it on a USB-C dongle with pass through power, so I only have one cable to disconnect when moving around. And call me crazy, even though I use a mechanical external keyboard most of the time, I actually like typing on the butterfly keyboard more than on other laptop keyboards I have and had.

[Liskni_si]

Not a solution that scales, but if you really want a modern CPU variant of the x230, check this: https://www.xyte.ch/shop/x330-pricing-list/

They also have the T25 frankenpad: https://www.xyte.ch/shop/t25-frankenpad-kit/ and https://www.xyte.ch/thinkpads/t25-frankenpad/

[criddell]

Have you looked at the P series laptops?

> Why do so few vendors offer RJ45 ports?

I'm guessing that because laptops are portable machines, almost nobody ever uses the network port and if you need one, you can use an adapter with the USB port.

[astorgard]

> Have you looked at the P series laptops?

They come close in number of ports and battery life *but* they still have an excessively big touchpad, don't have a 13 inch version and start at 1.7 kilos (which makes them less than ideal for carrying around).

But I agree they are the very nice machines and we keep a bunch of them in the lab.