For some time now I've been eyeing Lenovo's ThinkPad Compact Bluetooth Keyboard with TrackPoint with a mixture of
gadget lust and skepticism -- most of the reviews I saw said that the
Bluetooth connection had a tendency to be laggy. Combined with the amount
of trouble I've been having with Bluetooth on Linux Mint lately, and the
lack of a USB connection, and the high price, it's been pretty far down on
my list of things to buy.
Anyone who knows my fondness for addiction to
Thinkpad keyboards can figure out what was going to happen when Lenovo
came out with the ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II, featuring both Bluetooth
and a wireless USB dongle, but otherwise looking almost exactly like my
wired KU-1255 keyboard and the keyboards on most of my Thinkpad laptops. I
discussed that in "The Curmudgeon Contemplates Keyboards", a couple of weeks ago.
It arrived yesterday, much sooner than I'd expected. It's lovely, and
just about what I expected. It's hard to go wrong with a Thinkpad
keyboard.
Being nearly icon-blind it took me a while to puzzle out the switches,
because the quick-start sheet had nothing but a few pictures to explain
them. It didn't say anything at all about the "Android/Windows" switch.
So I went looking on their tech
support website and found nothing but a PDF of the quick-start. Not
helpful. (After a day and a half I found a review that explained that it
gives F9-F12 Android-specific functions, and indeed I was eventually able
to make out the tiny markings above them on the beveled edge of the
bezel.)
The website -- and most of the reviews -- also mentioned its support for
"6-point entry for the visually impaired", but DDG and Google found
nothing except references to this keyboard. Braille, maybe? Whatever.
There's nothing about it on the tech-support site.
There are some things I really appreciate as a cat's minion. It's exactly
the right size to sit on top of my laptop (Sable is a Thinkpad X230; the
keyboards are almost identical) with the lid closed and an external
monitor plugged in. If a cat shows signs of wanting to sit on it, I can
set it aside (or close the lid), and pick it up later. (I broke the
micro-USB connector on one of my wired Thinkpad keyboards, because I often
flip it up behind the laptop with the keys away from me -- and the cat.)
If a cat does sit on it, the on-off switch is easily reachable on
the right-hand side. Much easier than unplugging the cable.
So let's sum up. On the positive side: the wireless USB, Bluetooth, the
classic ThinkPad feel and layout, the TrackPoint nub, and two of the three
buttons are exactly as I would expect. (The middle button is in
the same plane as the two side buttons, and the raised dots are much lower
and are no longer blue.) The charging connector is USB-C. I haven't used
it long enough to evaluate battery life, but it's been on since yesterday
and claims to be at 99%; Lenovo claims two months, so that's believable.
It's just the right size to sit on an ultrabook like a Thinkpad X230 with
the lid closed.
I'm not sure whether to count the low-contrast markings on the function
keys as positive or negative. I've pretty-much abandoned my old emacs
key-bindings for them, and some of the functions indicated by the icons
are actually useful. I'll get out my label-maker, or label them with
white-out.
On the negative side: the USB cable is just for charging. For goodness'
sake, how much circuitry would it have taken for it to make that a third
connection mode? The documentation is sketchy -- the QuickStart page is
nothing but icons and arrows, and for an icon-impaired curmudgeon that's a
bit of a problem. Nowhere in the documentation does it explain
what the Android/Windows switch is for. There's nothing on Lenovo's tech
support website, either. There's no backlight, and the function keys are
labeled with low-contrast tiny letters. The dongle is, of course,
incompatible with Logitech's, so it uses another USB port. (This is a
minor quibble, because I had the slot I unplugged the old keyboard from.)
Some people would make the position of the Fn key, to the left of
Ctrl, as a problem. They might also complain about the Page Up and Page
Down keys' flanking the Up-Arrow in the inverted T arrangement. Since
I've be using Thinkpads since sometime in the last Millennium, and the new
page-up/page-down positions for 95% of the last decade, I don't have a
problem with either of those -- they're exactly what I want. Some people
would miss the trackpad and palm rest; I've been using a wired but
otherwise identical keyboard for years, and don't miss them. Your mileage
may vary.
Another fine post from
The Computer Curmudgeon (also at
computer-curmudgeon.com).
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