deskthority

Obligatory disclaimer: I am a braindead idiot who doesn’t know anything about anything, and has the habit of presenting his own opinions as unquestionably unquestionable facts.

I don't think any regular around here has failed to notice how much I have come to hate laptop keyboards, as each generation builds upon the crimes of the previous one.

As it turns out, I have gotten a replacement for my aging Lenovo G570 laptop — a Lenovo T15. All in all, a nice machine, with the (by now usual) exception of a disappointing keyboard.

Being a high-grade Lenovo laptop, I expected a keyboard with good-enough switches, slighly curved instead of flat keytops...


... and the usual shenanigans (both industry-wide and Lenovo-specific) that are now expected in the keyboard of a laptop: a function row with small buttons, swapped Fn and Ctrl keys...


... smaller buttons for the arrow keys...


... and the Page Up and Page Down buttons uncomfortably shoved in there as well, as if the lessons of the mid-90s in this regard had been forgott...WAIT, what is PrtSc doing there?!


Oh, Home and End displaced it. But... if the HUDE keys are here and there, instead of remaining in their usual assignment in Lenovo's typical 1800-like layout, what IS on top of the numeric keypad??


Oh. An equals sign, parentheses signs... and a BACKSPACE key?

For heaven's sake, Lenovo. A cursory look will reveal the superfluousness of the second Backspace key — the first one, still 1U in height and 1.75U in width, is RIGHT THERE, so that addition is pointless — it'd have been better to place a comma or a Tab key there. Or, you know, either (or both) of Pause and Scroll Lock, which are absent for no reason? (and don't come tell me that Fn+K or Fn+P (or Fn+B and Fn+S) supplement their absence — this is still a 1800-like physical layout)

Still, you could be in for a 3 out of 4. Unless...


With Switch Hitter, I pressed first the =+ key, then Shift-9 and then Shift-0, then the space bar, and then the keys =, ( and ) in the supranumpad row. Or was it the other way around? The scan codes produced are the exact same.

DAMMIT, LENOVO! What the hell, hard-coded national-layout-dependent scan codes? What WERE you smoking? (please tell us so we'll know to avoid it like the plague)


It's not just that this is dumb beyond words — these keys won't work on most other national layouts (right now, pressing those keys with the one I use results in "!)=" instead of "=()") and doing so is hard to properly maintain (do T15 models with ISO keyboards instead return the scan codes 0x10;0x30, 0x10;0x38 and 0x10;0x39, so they'll produce the characters =, ( and )? Never mind that this will work in most but not all ISO-based layouts). Worse than that is the fact that the USB HID Usage Tables specification DOES provide scan codes for these three keys, with their intended meaning (pages 56 to 58). Get the hardware properly designed, get the firmware right, then reach an accord with other OEM makers to support what the standard already provides for, and do so as well with the largest operating system makers, so they'll update their logical layouts to support these three "new" keys as they are supposed to be.

But, hey, at least the second Backspace key is not a Power Off key.



We definitely need keyboard-less laptops. Getting a laptop with a good keyboard is definitely a lost cause.

But wait, there's more!

I had to go into the UEFI, to get the F keys to behave as F keys (another industry-wide shenanigan), and noticed that the UEFI allows me to select a pre-OS national layout, from a list of 27 options:



I selected a layout (guess which one) that differs in its placements for the equals sign and the parenthesis, booted Windows back up, repeated the Switch Hitter test... and got the same results. Yeah.


Lenovo, this kind of shiRt doesn't have a place even in low-end Chromebooks — in higher-end lineups is inexcusable. Get your act together, FFS.

These bizarre laptop keyboard layouts have to be the result of focus groups or something. My philosophy is that singular visions almost always result in better design. Design by committee always ends up being chaotic.

depletedvespene wrote: 30 Aug 2022, 23:53
Displaced LCtrl key. It's supposed to be in the CORNER!

I have had a T440p for some years and it is a great little machine.

Naturally, as a 122-key terminal user on my primary computer, I have plenty of bones that I could pick about the layout, but this is the one that truly makes me crazy.

fohat wrote: 01 Sep 2022, 13:46

depletedvespene wrote: 30 Aug 2022, 23:53
Displaced LCtrl key. It's supposed to be in the CORNER!

I have had a T440p for some years and it is a great little machine.

Naturally, as a 122-key terminal user on my primary computer, I have plenty of bones that I could pick about the layout, but this is the one that truly makes me crazy.

Looking at the T440p, it's clear that it's the same physical layout, only the supranumpad row has been changed from the "access keys" to an extension of the numpad itself — a poorly thought out extension.

After writing my rant, repressed horrid memories of Microsoft-branded keyboards put up for sale back in 2020 surfaced. Still for sale on its store you can find this abomination:



Note how Microsoft ALSO provides the =, ( and ) keys. While the first of those three has a better location, and a second Backspace on the top-right corner does make sense in this full-size unit, several other layouting crimes offset these slight improvements: there is a Clear key, the ill-defined key originated in Apple's warped keyboardery, absolutely non-sensical on a keyboard meant for use with Windows (or Linux, or ANY operating system, MacOS included); Num Lock has been shoved onto the (fused) supranav row, displacing its three keys for no real reason; there are TWO Delete keys rather close to each other, again for no real reason (*).


I don't know if this keeb (for it can't be called a "keyboard") also pulls the same shiRt regarding the actual implementation of the =, ( and ) keys, but... I'm not sure I want to find out whether that is the case or not.



That Clear crime is not an exception:


This keeb adds the felony of entirely omitting Print Screen, Scroll Lock, Pause and Num Lock (unless they're very hidden in the Fn layer, again for no real reason). Is that a "LOCK" button right above Backspace? At least it's not a Power Off button...





(*) Talk about a wasted opportunity: if they wanted to screw around, the top-row Delete key could have been Insert and both keys in the nav cluster could have been fused into a single 2U Wang-style Delete key.

I used Lenovo laptops 450 and 480? between 2015 and 2020 and quite liked the swapped Fn - Ctrl layout - better the cramped Ctrl - Win - Alt than Ctrl - gap (Fn) - Win - Alt.
What I didn't like was the key bouncing, maakinng tyypos liike thhis and since the OS was Windows, had to activate the key filtering for disabled people and fine tune bouncing time to 22ms in the registry.

But still much better than HP Elitebook Keyboard with the one key network off pitfall in basically all categories.

Having Fn on the left is a ThinkPad tradition, so I don't think that is bad if the convention is consistent. You can get used to it if a ThinkPad is your workhorse. (Personally I map Ctrl on Caps Lock anyway, so I'm not bothered)

However, Lenovo has made some "ThinkPad"-branded laptops recently with ultra-short key travel that don't compare even to real chiclet ThinkPad keyboards. the keyboard for the Z13 also swaps Ctrl and Fn and reduces the size of the arrow keys.
This is inexcusable. The person at Lenovo who greenlit this laptop as a "ThinkPad" should be fired!

depletedvespene wrote: 01 Sep 2022, 14:45 After writing my rant, repressed horrid memories of Microsoft-branded keyboards put up for sale back in 2020 surfaced.

There is this rumour that all designers at Microsoft would have been replaced with young Mac-users, who don't even use MS-Windows themselves.

Findecanor wrote: 06 Sep 2022, 10:28 Having Fn on the left is a ThinkPad tradition, so I don't think that is bad if the convention is consistent. You can get used to it if a ThinkPad is your workhorse. (Personally I map Ctrl on Caps Lock anyway, so I'm not bothered)

As you mention below, it ain't consistent... and it still sucks, IMNAAHO. Turns out my T15's UEFI allows to swap Fn and Ctrl, so I tried it... somehow, having a 1U Ctrl key and a 1.5U Fn key to its immediate right is even worse.

Findecanor wrote: 06 Sep 2022, 10:28 However, Lenovo has made some "ThinkPad"-branded laptops recently with ultra-short key travel that don't compare even to real chiclet ThinkPad keyboards. the keyboard for the Z13 also swaps Ctrl and Fn and reduces the size of the arrow keys.
This is inexcusable. The person at Lenovo who greenlit this laptop as a "ThinkPad" should be fired!

No disagreement from me here!

Findecanor wrote: 06 Sep 2022, 10:28

depletedvespene wrote: 01 Sep 2022, 14:45 After writing my rant, repressed horrid memories of Microsoft-branded keyboards put up for sale back in 2020 surfaced.

There is this rumour that all designers at Microsoft would have been replaced with young Mac-users, who don't even use MS-Windows themselves.

When I first saw those horrendous keebs, my first thought was "This was the work of a Macintrasher." — well before the rumour circulated. I wonder how many more people thought the same; heck, perhaps this was the source of it to begin with!

One way or another, someone above their level had to have taken a look at their obviously defective designs and vetted them. That guy should be fired and sent on a special assignment to planet Venus.