• @[email protected]
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      67 months ago

      Yeah, ThinkPad used to allow either a CD drive or an extra battery in their T-series. They stopped offering the extra battery and started soldering RAM, so I got the cheaper E-series (might as well save cash if I can get what I want).

      I think there’s a market there. Have an option for a hot-swap battery to bring on trips and use the GPU at home. Serious travelers could even bring a spare battery to keep working for longer.

      touchpad with three mechanical buttons

      Yes please! And give me the ThinkPad nipple as well. :) If they had those, I’d not bother with even looking at Lenovo. The middle button is so essential to my normal workflow that any other laptop (including my fancy MacBook for work) feels crappy.

      I’m guessing the things they made modular are just the low hanging fruit. It’s pretty easy to make a USB-C to whatever port, it’s a bit harder to make a pluggable battery in a slot that can also support a GPU.

        • @[email protected]
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          27 months ago

          The thing is, I only like the Trackpoint in a laptop. It’s really nice to scroll while holding the middle mouse button and just shifting my finger. That way, my hand is ready to type, unlike using the trackpad, where I have to move my hands to type, and it works well in my largely keyboard-driven workflow (ViM for text editing, Trackpoint for web browsing).

          On a desktop, I have multiple screens and way more real estate, so the Trackpoint isn’t nearly as effective and it’s worth using the mouse instead.

          But I honestly don’t use my laptop all that often, so it’s something I’m fine doing without. But all other things being similar, I’ll prefer the Trackpoint since it’s a nice value add.

          It’s cool that they’re making those keyboards though. I have and nice mechanical keyboards, so I’m not looking for one, but I would be very interested in a Framework-compatible keyboard with a Trackpoint.