New ThinkPad X9 comes without TrackPoint

by aquiron 12/30/24, 11:17 AMwith 22 comments
by pseudonyon 12/30/24, 12:17 PM

The moment the track point is gone is the moment I'll stop buying them.

Obviously, that's one sale, but I'm pretty sure we are a large'ish group. There are, after all, not many vendors offering a track point today, so it is a differentiating factor, and we a captive audience.

Between that and occasionally screwy Linux support, I wonder what their thinking is. Sever all their unique markets and compete evenly against everyone else ? Do they feel Windows offers enough to avoid bleeding sales to Apple ? And what? They feel so confident in what's left of the Thinkpad that they have no reason to fear other vendors ? Interesting. Maybe they know better, but I'd be concerned if I held their stock

by conartist6on 12/30/24, 12:05 PM

Call it something other than a ThinkPad... Meanwhile I'm just here trying to get my TeX Yoda II repaired after water spilled on it. Single best I/O device I have ever owned. https://tex.com.tw/products/yoda-ii

I guess I can't say I blame them though. Most people these days don't even know how a trackpoint is meant to be used effectively (i.e. by making aggressive use of mouse acceleration to rough-center the cursor in the area of the screen you want it and then fine tuning).

by axiologiston 12/30/24, 4:12 PM

Lenovo builds a very wide range of laptops and this one is just pirating the ThinkPad moniker severely harming the Thinkpad brand name's reputation. A real Thinkpad by default needs to have a trackpoint to be considered one. If it doesn't have a trackpoint it's not a Thinkpad. Just ignore this and keep to the real Thinkpads.

by ksecon 12/30/24, 2:40 PM

Not sure if this is new but also notice the keyboard style has changed? Seems more like MacBook style with very low Key Travel ( 1mm ). Sigh I remember Thinkpad and SurfaceBook was the only few sticking to 1.5mm Key Travel.

by ano-theron 12/30/24, 11:44 AM

Oh no. That’s the biggest reason why I just bought another ThinkPad instead of a comparable other brand.

by slackfanon 12/30/24, 2:36 PM

Well, then there's no point (heh) in buying one.

by jacknewson 12/30/24, 3:12 PM

It looks fake to me.

But if true, it's not a real thinkpad then.

by John23832on 12/30/24, 1:17 PM

As someone who used to be a huge Thinkpad fan/user, the Thinkpad brand is dead.

I liked Thinkpads because of trackpoint, linux support, quality builds. 2/3 of those are gone. Linux support is still there, but even the higher end builds have shotty quality at this point. I wanted a quality tool to do quality work.

I switched to mac with the arm conversion. Quality builds with Unix support. Once Aasahi is fully functional, the world will be complete.