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The overall benefits of the other aspects of the X240 outweigh the marginal keyboard and mouse configuration.
I cannot disagree with this statement more, actually, now that I've had a few months with the machine, and anything I can do to save a power user from a bad purchase decision is a good deed in my book.
The click-pad thing remains infuriatingly inconsistent too. But there are other frustrations too: power management has still NEVER worked (doesn't sleep, hibernates at 7% regardless of settings, can't handle screen dimming, and on and on and on), and I have tried every reinstallation trick in the book. Various Lenovo system-software versions have caused BSODs (though to their credit, they seem to catch these themselves, and fix them quickly). And though the machine is fast (mine has 12GB RAM and an SSD), the battery life is not what I would have hoped, and when I alternate between this machine and my X201, the speed just doesn't feel like that much of a plus next to all the minuses.
Eyep, sorry that you feel that way but I guess it is different strokes for different folks.
I am not a programmer, but I am a heavy laptop user, spending a good 5+ hours on my X240 everyday and a lot of time on airplanes.
Is the keyboard/mouse setup worse than my X200. Yes, no question. Is it so horrible that I would keep using my 5 year old X240? Not a chance.
Power management is a non-issue for me and I love my real-world 12+ hours of battery life. Currently in Taiwan and used it non-stop from Portland to Narita and again to Taipei on a single charge. I was working on Word and Powerpoint pretty much the entire flight and had iTunes going on the background. Would not be possible on my X200 even with the extended 9-cell battery.
Keyboard typing is fine. It wasn't great, but it was fine. Certainly better than the HP Elitebook that I had the misfortune to try for about 3 months. Gave that piece of crap back to IT and bought the X240 and expensed it (one of the benefits of a smaller company)
I don't know how you can state that your performance does not feel any different from an X201. It is nowhere near the same class of speed and if you are a programmer and doing compiles, I would be surprised if the compile speeds are even close. My X240 blows my X200 away and while I would love to have my X200 keyboard back, that won't keep me from really enjoying my X240.
BTW the shorter screen height makes it even easier to use on the airplane as I really don't worry about someone reclining the seat in front of me and cracking my screen.
I would like to know how you got 12GB of RAM because the most Lenovo sells is 8GB. Did you do the upgrade yourself? Maybe that is what is causing you some of your problems?
I am not defending the new keyboard and fully integrated mouse/touchpad. They are a definite step back but it isn't a reason not to upgrade from a 4+ year old machine.
The keyboard is a B+ compared to my X200 The backlit keyboard is a huge step up from the old Think light (or whatever it was called). The touchpad itself is probably an A- (it really is quite good) but the integrated mouse buttons specifically the ones at the top of the trackpad get a barely passable C-. I do miss the feel of real mouse buttons and the middle mouse button is pretty bad (that gets a solid D- in my book as it impossible to avoid it when trying to do a left mouse click a lot of the time), but the result is nothing fatal. You just see the scroll graphic appear. I move my thumb another 0.25" left and all is good. I would love to see Lenovo go back to real buttons on the top, but that probably won't happen for cost reasons.