Shoddy Laptop? Linux 4.4 Gets Patch To Support ESC Key On Lenovo Laptop

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Shoddy Laptop? Linux 4.4 Gets Patch To Support ESC Key On Lenovo Laptop

With the Linux 4.4 kernel the Lenovo Yoga 3 laptop owners out there will finally have support for using their ESC key...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.4-ESC-Key-Patch

[Adarion]

lolwut. But this is the kind of problem you never get to know before you purchase such a device. But it sadly seems to be a trend since Lenovo got off IBM's hook that the once great and praised keyboards go down the drain. Build quality, layout and F-keys not working as intended. Volume and mute as defaults instead. Seems barlay anybody in the Windows world ever uses Alt-F4, Ctrl-F1, Alt-F2 and so on. How sad. (Typical consumer laptop: Glossy mirror-screen, 16:9, weird choice of interfaces, horrible keyboards and so on. But shiny cover and lots of annoying stickers.)

[Jumbotron]

Man, you've got that right. I have been a fan of Thinkpads all the way back to the 90's. It's the only laptop brand I've ever used. But after the T60 series and the acquisition by Lenovo, slowly at first, and now more rapidly, the build quality of Thinkpads have gone to relative crap. Relative, I say to other even more crappier laptops by most major manufacturers of Windows based laptops. The last really decent Thinkpad keyboard was on the T500/W500 series a few years back. Then, in order to copy Apple and make their cases thinner, Lenovo decided to go with those lower profile "chiclet" keys. Not NEARLY as bad as on the Mac or other laptops.....but I have had to adjust for DECADES of typing on a normal Thinkpad, much less the really old school IBM clickety clack desktop keyboards.

But, HELLS BELLS, my wife made the mistake of purchasing two CONSUMER Lenovo Ideapads for my boys. The keyboards on those....absolutely unusable !! I mean....the keyboard on the original IBM PCjr was more ergonomic and usable !!!

And the build quality on the latest Thinkpads like the 540......crap. Flimsy lids. Bad keyboard. At least the T530/W530 was still built like a tank even with the substandard chiclet keyboard. But the 540s are crap. Even HP's business line of laptops are better than Lenovo's. However, their consumer lines are still utter dreck as they've always been.

[Hibbelharry]

Moaning about Thinkpad Quality going low is utter crap. I've been selling Thinkpads for 10 years, starting when R30/T30 series were current. I've seen all that dying T4x Notebooks (bad soldering), all that dying T6x Notebooks (nvidia fiasco) and so on. It's utter nonsense, as we can see IBM also produced some of the most expensive and rubbish devices you could get. Try to find such failures on current lineups manufactured by Lenovo. Except of faulty BIOS-Eeproms on 52x series, you will hardly find such disasters. These days Thinkpads are still one of the most reliable Brands for Notebooks you can get. Try to find better alternatives, you will fail.

[Veske]

Intsall Linux on a Macbook pro.

[Ericg]

Just to give some offset to this... the Lenovo T-series Thinkpads are still tried and true. As far as the keyboards go: software support was perfect day-1 for my T450s, and the physical keyboard itself is probably the nicest laptop keyboard I've ever used.

[Jumbotron]

Moaning about Thinkpad Quality going low is utter crap. I've been selling Thinkpads for 10 years, starting when R30/T30 series were current. I've seen all that dying T4x Notebooks (bad soldering), all that dying T6x Notebooks (nvidia fiasco) and so on. It's utter nonsense, as we can see IBM also produced some of the most expensive and rubbish devices you could get. Try to find such failures on current lineups manufactured by Lenovo. Except of faulty BIOS-Eeproms on 52x series, you will hardly find such disasters. These days Thinkpads are still one of the most reliable Brands for Notebooks you can get. Try to find better alternatives, you will fail.

YMMV ( Your Mileage May Vary )

Whatever, dude. I've used and sold Thinkpads, HP's, Acer, Gateway ( both Gateway and Gateway 2000 ), Sony VAIO's ( you talk about some utter shit there ), in the 90's and 2000's and have owned and used for work Thinkpads since. Wife has an old HP. Have been handed down plenty of others. The Thinkpads have always owned them all in overall build quality, maintainability, and endurance. Have particular models had faults. Sure. The T60's you mentioned with the Nvidia GPU's with bad solder.....what does that have to do with build quality of the Thinkpad case and keyboard? You lost the thread there, son.

Obviously you have not owned, used, or sold a w540 yet. It's shit. In comparison to other historical models of Thinkpad toughness....it's shit. Our company has 100's of them along with hundreds of models going back to the T30's and 40's all the way up to the 540's and soon to be 550's. We have Helix's out the yin yang also.

We are part of IBM's "Smarter Planet" initiative in the sports information realm. We have IBM and Lenovo servers, PC's, laptops and tablets. And I can say truthfully that Thinkpad quality has diminished. The keyboard quality has diminished. The stability of the lids has diminished.

You might sell them....but we use them. Ship them worldwide. Use them in the desert, in the rain, in the heat and the cold. They are tougher mostly than most other brands with the possible exception of HP's business line. But, as I said, their overall quality has diminished as of late.

[abu_shawarib]

I wondering when will kernel developers fix brightness keys on Asus laptops. The bug is there since 2011 or something.

[DeepDayze]

I am the proud owner of a Lenovo SL510 and an IBM T42...the T42 still runs like a champ (using Linux on it) and have owned this machine for 7 years. As for the SL510 it is pretty decent for a consumer machine. I do agree the build quality of Lenovo machines is deteriorating however and I've had the experience of working on a Carbon X1...that device was pretty flimsy IMO.

[Barnabas]

Personally I will never buy a Lenovo product because of their shoddy security practices.
There are many other links and examples of this if you search for them.
Funny how they are used so much by big corporations.