It does not appear to be a good-faith question or at least there does not appear to be a true effort to understand it. FWIW, I use pointing stick and the poster's analogy is the one I wish I could've used for decade - it is friendly and detailed and perfectly represents my use case and feelings (and is much better explanation than my own sibling comment, which was admittedly more of a "over my dead body" :). Like keyboard shortcuts for those who use them, it has more of a learning curve but (we feel) is ultimately a much faster, more efficient and effective method of doing things. You don't have to agree, it may not be for everyone - as I mentioned in sibling response, my wife and I will forever use our laptops differently, and that's OK!
(if we want to start a parallel religious war, let's talk about 3.5mm on phones too! :> )
>> every other manufacturer has settled on trackpads
Note that at various points, until very recently, Dell, HP, Toshiba etc all had power-user oriented models with pointing sticks. If they've gotten rid of them in the last year or two, that is indeed a sad news for many of us - it was never a "either/or" proposition. There's already Apple and many knock-off for those who prefer it; I hope that a laptop for power-users still has a profitable niche :-/
Thank you for providing a useful answer, despite not believing it was posted in good faith. You might be right about other producers still making sticks. I haven't been in the market for a few years.
What should I have done differently to make it appear as a true effort to understand?
I'm a random stranger on the internet, so with no intent on telling you how to live or interact :), My own limited biased subjective 0.0005 cents:
1. Original question: "Who's still using this?" is direct and to the point; I grok it. But note that some people in many contexts may interpret it... aggressive. Human mind fills in detail in blunt / short sentences. Politeness in some cases is filling in those blanks pre-emptively. Uncharitable reading of your question would fill in the blanks in "Who's still using this?" as "WHO is still using this?" expanded to "WHO is still using this???" expanded to "WHO is stupid enough to still be using this???". They/We would be wrong, but be cognizant of good and bad interpretations of writing.
But that's very minor and extremely audience specific. Bigger point:
2. Charitable reading. This is such a hard thing to do for all of us, especially on the interwebs, especially when there's even a minor difference opinion. I thoroughly, genuinely, believe that the keyboard-shortcut poster provided best possible explanation and tried very heard to type it up and come up with meaningful analogy. I will totally steal it! :) When you read it / interpreted it as a rant / over-my-dead-body, I in turn did not feel you gave them a charitable reading, which subconsciously meant I did not give you a charitable reading either.
So what I think would've made it appear as a true effort to understand, would've been... making a true effort to understand - reading the keyboard shortcut post with a mindset of "what information can I gleam from this / what can I learn / which insight can I take from this". Which, FWIW, is an approach that I think is phenomenally useful in life, I'm actively working on myself, and am successful some small percentage of time :D
(again, not claiming some useful insight, but since you asked, my 100 Croatian Lipa :). All the best!
Thank you. I see Stratoscope responded as well, so I'll keep this short. (again :)
Re-read the post. The original conclusion was:
> The TrackPoint may be something like this. Those of us who insist on it may be small in number. But if it is ever removed, then the one reason why we will only buy ThinkPads is gone. We may as well get a Dell or an HP or a Mac M1 or whatever.
It says nothing of who "those of us" are (the explicit question) other than a cyclical "those who use TrackPoints." And it doesn't at all answer why (the implicit question.)
So I genuinely couldn't find any information related to my question. Since the (long) text was about keyboard rather than pointing device, it also felt very... out of scope. Hence my conclusion: classifying it as a related rant. Granted, I could have just ignored it. Not sure why I replied, TBH.
I guess you're telling me to not gatekeep and try to keep replies on track. Instead, go with the flow. Fair enough. ;)
I think a few posts went on to eventually answer factually what we love about trackpoint - keeping hands on home row, preciseness, speed, high skill ceiling, etc.
But I also think the keyboard shortcut analogy, while indeed not talking about TrackPoint itself, is actually the most useful post for the goal of understanding it: One may never agree about usefulness of TrackPoint, but that analogy helps with understanding that "There's a small minority of power users for whom this is a force multiplier and who feel very strongly about the optimization it allows them" :)
(if we want to start a parallel religious war, let's talk about 3.5mm on phones too! :> )
>> every other manufacturer has settled on trackpads
Note that at various points, until very recently, Dell, HP, Toshiba etc all had power-user oriented models with pointing sticks. If they've gotten rid of them in the last year or two, that is indeed a sad news for many of us - it was never a "either/or" proposition. There's already Apple and many knock-off for those who prefer it; I hope that a laptop for power-users still has a profitable niche :-/