[w1ntermute]

I love the TrackPoint. The first thing I do on any ThinkPad I get is disable the trackpad in the BIOS, because it's completely unnecessary when you have a TrackPoint. It's better than every other pointing instrument I've tried, including stand-alone mice (except for gaming) and trackpads (the MacBook trackpads included).

Once you get used to the TrackPoint, you'll realize what a piece of crap the MacBook trackpad is.

[enko]

》Once you get used to the TrackPoint, you'll realize what a piece of crap the MacBook trackpad is

Ooooooh no you won't. Sorry Wintermute, but you're speaking from a very, very small niche market. In my experience a huge majority of people overwhelmingly prefer the mac trackpad for all conceivable uses. Two-finger scroll is a killer app.

[w1ntermute]

> In my experience a huge majority of people overwhelmingly prefer the mac trackpad for all conceivable uses.

In my experience, a huge majority of people don't even know what a TrackPoint is, let alone give it a shot.

I won't deny that this is because Lenovo's advertising is nonexistent. Apple has done an excellent job over the last 5 years of convincing the general public that they have the best hardware on the market. And although I personally relish the unchanging ThinkPad design, I can see how many people would find it to be anachronistic in the 21st century.

> Two-finger scroll is a killer app.

I've had 2 finger scroll with the TrackPoint for years, and it's a lot better than the trackpad way - my right index finger moving the TrackPoint and my right thumb holding down the middle mouse button. My fingers stay on the home row, and I use my left thumb for the space bar and my right thumb stays on the mouse buttons at most times. I've tried the MacBook "two-finger scroll" method, and it just breaks my train of thought to have to move my hand back and forth from the trackpad to the keyboard.

In fact, I like the ThinkPad keyboard so much that I have the USB model for use with my desktop.

[CountSessine]

Not really, no.

I use a ThinkPad E520 at work. Every day. For 8 hours+.

I like the TrackPoint. I use the TrackPoint. I think I'm fairly proficient at navigating with it. But the only reason for using it, in my opinion, is because of how bad the ThinkPad's trackpad is.

I'll take my MBP's trackpad over Lenovo's trackpoint any day of the week. It's faster in most cases and much more accurate. It's just better.

[andreer]

You'll be happy to hear that the X1 Carbon has a new trackpad, which has been described by Notebookreview as "Oh my! Best touchpad surface ... ever!". The gizmodo reviewer: "Using the trackpad, was the first time I've ever done multitouch gestures on Windows and liked it."

As both a Linux and Mac user, I'm happy a PC manufacturer is finally getting it.

[encoderer]

This is of course an ultimate bike-shedding topic, but I'll add my .02 anyway:

With a multi-touch extension like jiTouch that lets you configure your own per-app multi-touch gestures, the large trackpad (especially external trackpads) are no-debate the most versatile "mouse" alternative.

I have many keyboard shortcuts mapped to gestures for PyCharm, Sublime and Xcode that let me do very cool things during specific workflows (think: debugging, deployment, etc). I've only been using it (and Macs in general) since November but it's the first time i don't totally loathe having to move my hand from the keyboard.