doneganm wrote:I've had a lot of IBM / lenovo laptops in the past: a20 / a20m / a30 / X200 / X201 / X220. The keyboards have been getting worse since lenovo took over. In my opinion that's simply because lenovo is a Chinese company and in China the most important thing is money / cost. I know this since I've lived in China for nearly 5 years and have witnessed this and heard countless stories from friends / colleagues about this problem. The engineers and designers will get a big pat on the back for reducing production costs. Through every generation of a product they may use a slightly cheaper material for some component, reduce the thickness of that material, increase tolerances to reduce QC fails and create generic components that can be re-used across product lines. This might only cause a slight difference between each generation of a product, but when comparing quality from the latest product (e.g. X220) to a product a couple of generations before (e.g. X200), there is a marked difference.
The problem is that each new model in a product line sets the new benchmark, and that benchmark reflects a marginally lower quality than the previous generation. Over multiple generations we get downwards quality creep. In other industries in China this downwards creep has frequently led to disastrous consequences. E.g. a bridge collapsed killing lots of people because the concrete mix used too much filler (to reduce cost), milk being cut with just a bit too much melamine powder (which falsely increases protein test results), resulting in dead babies, industrial alcohol being used make fake vodka and so on. Obviously a slightly worse keyboard / laptop is not as serious as those other examples, but you get the idea.
The X220, T420, T520, W520 had better keyboard and style than any American, Japanese and European (the last one being a joke) producer at that time.
The Chinese were the last to give in to the shit quality and low price desired by American, Japanese and European crap-consumers. It was not what they wanted, it was what you wanted.