The ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint is an external keyboard that has an ultra-slim design. It has the same keys with the keyboard of your ThinkPad computer. Your option package includes the following: ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint, Setup and warranty poster and Software and User Guide CD.
$ 47.95
It’s a perfectly fine keyboard for all but the most picky,
I’ve used a whole bunch of external Trackpoint keyboards since the Trackpoint was first invented (when I worked at IBM Almaden Research, where Ted Selker, whose lab it came from, also worked).
I pronounce this keyboard in my “Top 10{b81fbfd19e1fca5890798868c0714c408bbd5ec471654b6f9630c0fffa6e7eb3}” Trackpoint keyboards. The key action is firm, crisp, and quiet. The large delete key is a welcome improvement, the volume and mute buttons are very well designed, and the lack of an annoying track pad is a gift.
As for the other reviewer’s comments about it being “slow” — I’m about a 40wpm touch typist (I’ve never improved my speed past my 9th grade typing class), but I’ve been typing all my working life, and I just don’t think your average typist who is similar to myself is going to run into any double character issues (I just typed issues twice, without issue, BTW).
As to the “flimsy construction” I can’t agree. All external keyboards are made of similar grade plastic, and I think what the reviewers here might be objecting to is weight, not quality. This keyboard is very very light. But it only “flimsy” if you equate “light” with “flimsy.” By that metric, the Boeing 787 is also “flimsy” because it’s made of composites and not heavier aluminum. Cameras, watches, and cellphones, yes, the heft of metal in your hand is something I prefer as well. But a keyboard that primarily sits, unmoving, on your desk? Oy.
My only negative is the lack of a separate numeric pad. It’s rare I have to do data entry, but when I do, it was nice to have that numeric pad waiting for me at the side. If they came out with a version with the numeric pad, I’d rank this at the top of my list of external Trackpoint keyboards I’ve used over the last 15 years.
Final note, as always, you should toss the wasteful CD with the out-of-date driver and get the new one from the Lenovo web site (1.02 as of this writing). The driver allows you to separately set the knobs for your external and laptop keyboards, which is key (no pun intended). I’m on Win 7 64 bit, and had no problems just plugging the keyboard in. It worked with the auto installed drivers just fine, and then I used it to pull down the Lenovo driver, adjusted my Trackpoint pressure and auto-scroll options, and now I’m happily typing away, double letters and all.
Highly recommended, especially remembering the prices that IBM used to charge for these things. Remember when the color black set you back an extra $90? 🙂
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|Pay attention to review dates!,
SUMMARY: If you have used (and love) the Lenovo Thinkpad keyboard, this is a great reproduction that you can use as a USB keyboard. I definitely recommend!
I’ve grown quite accustomed to Lenovo’s STELLAR thinkpad keyboards because my work laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad T420. I was quite ecstatic to find out that Lenovo makes these USB ThinkPad keyboards…Still, I didn’t want to buy something that would be a poor imitation of the real thing…and so I read reviews.
If you read some reviews, you will find talk of bugginess…there are reviews that speak of missed keys or of multiple letters being capitalized if you type too quickly (the “INitial CAps” problem). I wanted to know if these problems had been solved, so I googled some more…and I kept finding years old (2009, 2010) forum posts talking about the issue…and all of the posts seemed to conclude the same thing: there was a problem, and there were no concrete solutions.
But why were all of the forum posts so old?
When I checked the Amazon reviews, I tried to do something different…I sorted the reviews in order of NEWEST FIRST. From there, I discovered reviews from 2012 pointing out that people who had most recently bought this keyboard weren’t experiencing the issue anymore.
I would like to join this crowd and PRAISE this keyboard. If you don’t believe me, just sort by “Newest First” and hear the other folks praising too.
I type at over 100 wpm, and I have never experienced any problems with this keyboard missing strokes or capitalizing multiple times. So, let me just break this down for you:
PROS:
+ This keyboard will be familiar to anyone who has used (and loves) a Lenovo ThinkPad. That is the value proposition here.
+ Lenovo has fixed the major issues that were present in some of the 2008 and 2009 reviews, so this is completely usable.
+ The classic thinkpad keyboard “palm rest” is well appreciated here.
+ This keyboard does have a trackpoint, so if you are proficient with those little red buttons, then you can use that here.
That being said, there are still some cons
CONS:
– The keyboard appears to default to having the num-lock key on every time you reboot, so you have to manually turn that off when you start up. I haven’t figured out how to change this; it appears to be a BIOS setting, but I haven’t investigated that.
– Compared to a Lenovo Thinkpad keyboard that is actually a part of a laptop, this keyboard is VERY light. If you’re trying to balance it on your legs like I usually do, you may find it to wobble too much. However, on a concrete surface like a desk, there is no problem.
– If you haven’t used a ThinkPad keyboard before, there are some things to get used to here. The leftmost key is the Fn key, NOT the ctrl key (as it is on most non-Lenovo Keyboards), so if your ctrl commands don’t seem to be working, make sure that you’re actually pressing the ctrl button.
In the end, I think that there is one thing that could be added to this to make this my DREAM KEYBOARD – a track*pad*. It is true that this keyboard has a trackpoint, I often find myself reaching for a trackpad that isn’t here…since on my laptop, I do frequently use the trackpad buttons and scrolling gestures.
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|Great, except for one glaring problem,
This keyboard is wonderful – nearly everything that I would want in a keyboard, and nothing more. The quote that comes to mind is “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
BUT — I can confirm that, as the previous poster noted, this keyboard is broken and unusable for a speedy typist. It has two problems: First, INitial CAps; the shift key does not immediately release in software when you physically release it, so a fast typist ends up with TWo CApitals at the beginning of almost every sentence. Titles are particularly bad; you end up with “THe PResident of the UNited STates.” It’s particularly infuriating in that it happens so reliably that when you backspace and re-type, you get the exact same problem.
The second issue is that, often, double-clicking a character will give only ONE copy of that character. So “Three little puppies hopped over the puddle” becomes “Thre litle pupies hoped over the pudle.” It does this almost every time, if you are a fast typist.
All of this occurs with both the default drivers and the latest (11/5/2009) drivers on the website. I tested using Windows 7.
It’s too bad, because this would otherwise be a wonderful keyboard. I’ve never seen a keyboard before that couldn’t keep up with my typing. I guess that if you are not a touch typist, this keyboard would be perfectly fine for you.
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