> I don't understand why Lenovo doesn't add an extra 1 mm to the thickness of their laptops, at least it would restore the reputation for typing feel on ThinkPads.
Because, after years of advertising made by designers and not by technical people, for most potential buyers more thin = more modern so to remain in the game they have to adapt to the most idiotic trend today: make devices thin as credit cards no matter how this would impact their usability, battery life, robustness, repairability etc.
Wanting thinner and lighter devices isn't some sort of weird desire only non-technical people want. Computers have gradually miniaturized from something that fits in a warehouse to something that fits into a room in your office into something that fits on people's desks into something that fits in your pocket. And subsequently, the skills required to repair said devices ends up changing. I won't say it's easier or harder, though I would say through-hole components are much easier to swap out than SMDs. Yet I don't really see you complaining about that.
So no, striving for thinness is not idiotic. It follows the same principles of miniaturization of all components in PCs. It also changes the skillset required to work on the devices, but that's not really all that problematic.
> the most idiotic trend today: make devices thin as credit cards no matter how this would impact their usability, battery life, robustness, repairability etc.
They're not, though. Laptops are by definition a compromise product. You compromise on various things to afford yourself more portability. If you want a laptop that's easier to repair, they have those. You want something with more power? They have those too, but it's going to be less portable and have less battery life.
Your real complaint is that they don't make a Thinkpad that matches your own set of acceptable compromises and tradeoffs in a portable device. That's totally valid but has nothing to do with your asinine complaints about thinness.
Today thinnest laptops are much more than just miniaturization. It reminds me the time when Motorola issued a thinner and thinner razr models just because they didn't have any other innovative idea than "thin".
The moment that all the brands started focusing only on who is the thinnest instead of who has more features that's the point that they just ran out of innovative ideas.
Batteries are like car tires, they are expected to need replacing. Why can't I replace them myself and instead have to send the laptop to the lab? Why can't I decide which brand of batteries I want just like in my car? Maybe I want more powerful batteries or maybe I want lighter batteries.
Another issue is that the unrepairabilty of these laptops harms the environment a lot. Lenovo sells now laptops with 8GB and maybe it's acceptable for some uses. But in a year or two, these laptops will have to be thrown to trash cause you can't upgrade the memory in any way.
As many mentioned here they have fully working laptops for 5 or even 10 years and that's laptops that saved from the need to buy new ones.
> Today thinnest laptops are much more than just miniaturization.
So what? The market can bear having more than one kind of laptop and so exists many different kinds of laptops that come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes.
> The moment that all the brands started focusing only on who is the thinnest instead of who has more features that's the point that they just ran out of innovative ideas.
Except even if one brand focused only on that, there'd still be many others that did not.
> Batteries are like car tires, they are expected to need replacing. Why can't I replace them myself and instead have to send the laptop to the lab?
No laptop requires you sending it to a lab to replace your battery.
> Why can't I decide which brand of batteries I want just like in my car?
You mostly can. There's a whole lot of cheap replacement batteries you can buy for most laptop models.
> Maybe I want more powerful batteries or maybe I want lighter batteries.
In most cases this isn't really possible because of either 1) low market demand or 2) it's literally impossible to do so without modifying the chassis. A few thinkpads used to have this feature with a hot-swappable external battery that you could choose the capacity, though. You can still buy a T480 on ebay and go this route if you want.
> Another issue is that the unrepairabilty of these laptops harms the environment a lot.
I see this argument made a lot but I find it to be mostly made in bad faith. Most people use their laptop until it's not useful to them anymore and then get rid of it in some manner — selling it to someone else, handing it down to relatives, recycling it, and sometimes throwing it away.
> Lenovo sells now laptops with 8GB and maybe it's acceptable for some uses. But in a year or two, these laptops will have to be thrown to trash cause you can't upgrade the memory in any way.
People have been making that argument for at least 8 years now that 8gb wasn't going to be enough in a year or two, and yet it's still serviceable to plenty of people today. It's about as likely as the CPU that is soldered onto every laptop now (even the framework laptop) will stop being useful. Raspberry pis are at max sold with 8gb of RAM, are you really going to try and suggest that they won't be useful two year from now?
> As many mentioned here they have fully working laptops for 5 or even 10 years and that's laptops that saved from the need to buy new ones.
My 2013 Macbook Pro was working when I traded it into Apple to get a new laptop. I got a new laptop because I wanted something with more power, not because it strictly needed to be replaced. People that are able to will replace their laptop when they feel they need to and that threshold is different depending on the person. Throwing an ssd into an old laptop will only go so far.
If the keyboard was so thin as to be unusable, people would stop ordering them. Yes the T14s has less travel but for me, it is just as nice to type on as the X220.
I can't speak for the X series though, those are made to go as thin as possible, at a cost to battery life, reliability and CPU power.
I don't think that's true anymore since apple is reversing that trend with their new iphones being their thickest ever. The latest stupid trend seems to be to treat a device as a camera with smart features attached.
I fail to see how this is a stupid trend. Most people want to have a camera on their person always and smartphones are that camera. They've completely killed off the point and shoot market and mostly the camcorder market as well. Seeing genuine improvement on what is a family's camera year over year is welcome.
It comes at the cost of the rest of the phone. The latest pro max whatever camera bump is huge. Especially as this comes after a decade of thinner phones being the ultimate goal of designers.
Because, after years of advertising made by designers and not by technical people, for most potential buyers more thin = more modern so to remain in the game they have to adapt to the most idiotic trend today: make devices thin as credit cards no matter how this would impact their usability, battery life, robustness, repairability etc.