Lenovo has begun teasing techies ahead of Tuesday, 17 May's ThinkPad X1 launch - or the day after, if you live in the UK. No specs yet - though with modern laptops, it's not hard to guess - but Lenovo has posted a - terrible, terrible YouTube vid showing the MacBook Air rival's backlit keyboard, Gorilla Glass screen cover, …

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 20:12 GMT Nick Ryan

Keyboard...

Keyboard... wonder how coffee proof it is. And "good" to see that the a-holes at Lenovo are persisting in putting the f***ing Fn key in the place of the Ctrl key as usual. Barstards, causes so many problems when switching between Lenovo and normal keyboards.

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1. Thursday 12th May 2011 13:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  re: Coffee proof...
  
  If it's anythink like the T42, I know someone who accidentally poured a pint of coke into the keyboard, it ran out through the vent, onto the desk, not into the laptop. He shook the laptop upside down, took out the keyabord, washed it and stuck it in the airing cupboard for a few days. It worked fine when re-assembled.
  
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 20:12 GMT Christian Berger

Really a ThinkPad?

It can't be a ThinkPad. What's that strange button between Ctrl and Alt?

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 20:13 GMT Rob Haswell

No video link?

You say the ad is terrible but I would have liked to be able to work that out for myself.

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1. Wednesday 11th May 2011 22:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  heres the link
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjE2hN--LBc
  
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  1. Wednesday 11th May 2011 23:43 GMT Skoorb
    
    ARRGH
    
    It burns!
    
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 23:43 GMT pPPPP

fn key

You get used to the fn key location, although I tend to use my thinkpad keyboard most of the time now. They're good keyboards.

I used to get really annoyed about the lack of a windows key. Glad they have them now.

I personally couldn't care less if my keyboard is backlit, although I must confess to having a backlit keyboard for my home PC. It's useful for gaming in the dark but not really for typing. Unless you don't know where the keys are.

What I want from a laptop is a high resolution screen, decent battery life (with batteries that you can replace/upgrade), and the smallest size possible in relation to the screen size. Plus decent CPU/RAM/GPU etc of course.....

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1. Thursday 12th May 2011 12:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Can't be any worse than...
  
  ...swtiching between a Mac keyboard & OS X at home, to Apple keyboard & windows XP at work.
  
  The "ctrl-instead-of-'apple'" issues aside, try finding |, ~ or # when you're in a hurry. Or see how many times you get @ and " wrong on a daily basis. Lovely keyboards, don't get me wrong...but bloody annoying.
  
  I'd have a IBM keyboard over a Apple one any day.
  
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  1. Thursday 12th May 2011 14:02 GMT John H Woods
    
    @ vs "
    
    is actually the US/UK keyboard setting.
    
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2. Saturday 14th May 2011 14:02 GMT Nick Ryan
  
  Re: fn key
  
  Yes, forgotten about them omitting the Windows key for such a long time. That was a real pain that was barely fixed using custom keys.
  
  I agree physically about the keyboards though, the keyboards are generally good quality, although the dumb-arse fn-key positioning is the biggest bug bear for me when moving to use normal keyboard... aside from the damn forward and back navigation keys that I accidently hit all the sodding time of course. Wouldn't be so bad if it was possible to disable these keys without using a shovel load of crock-ware, however the fn key is fixed in a stupid place.
  
  Could be worse - could be the cretinous Logitech (?) keyboards that had a function key lock that default to not using the function keys and instead mapped to dumb "media" functions instead.
  
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Thursday 12th May 2011 12:14 GMT Anonymous Coward

@Nick Ryan

If it's anything like my cheepo SL510 it should be pretty dam good. I fell asleep and knocked a full cup of hot sweet tea over mine. The whole cup went through the keyboard and on to the desk below. After removing the keyboard and washing under the tap (!!) then leaving in the airing cupboard overnight, it was as good as new. Amazing.

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Thursday 12th May 2011 12:14 GMT Jimboom

Terrible ad

Just terrible

Although. Not a bad looking bit of kit. Look forward to it being "officially" released into the wild.

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Thursday 12th May 2011 12:14 GMT amanfromMars 1

An Honest to GOD Inconvenient Truth

"What I want from a laptop is a high resolution screen, decent battery life (with batteries that you can replace/upgrade), and the smallest size possible in relation to the screen size. Plus decent CPU/RAM/GPU etc of course....." .... pPPPP Posted Wednesday 11th May 2011 23:43 GMT

What the best of laptops offer is unfettered access to command and control of virtual operating systems and SCADA leverage via key keyed instruction sets/buffeting binary overflows, although any Really SMART Connecting Global Operating Device can also mimic and provide IT's Facility and AI Utility.

Tilt at that windmill to deny that is is so, is to accept and mark oneself for living with failure, with a capital F?

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Thursday 12th May 2011 12:22 GMT Anonymous Coward

X120e

How about making the ThinkPad X120e available outside the US and China first?

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Thursday 12th May 2011 12:24 GMT Robert Flatters

Yep that advert did suck abit

i dont think i have ever used an FN key before.....dont they listen we dont need it

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Friday 13th May 2011 11:21 GMT Rob Haswell

Fn key

Mate I use my function key all the time - for changing brightness, hibernating and activating the light. I'd be seriously pissed if they added loads of unnecessary keys for this stuff. I'd be surprised if everyone hates function keys as much as you.

Top tip for all us ThinkPad users on the ctrl key - rebind caps lock as control (http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/disable_caps_lock/). It makes so much sense in every way, also it removes the risk of accidentally hitting caps lock all the time!

Alternatively get ctrl by crooking your thumb.

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Friday 13th May 2011 12:52 GMT Marvin the Martian

Can we hear about the price?

Oh noes, first we need to shout how MB Airs are overpriced; once this one is priced up higher [as is to be fully expected] then we cannot berate Apple anymore.

Here's a fiver saying it's costlier [or can we not use ElReg as a betting house?].

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