Modern laptop gripes

Published 2024-08-02

tag(s): #overblown-minor-annoyances

So I guess this is a new tag because I tend to be extra-annoyed when little things change, despite being overall pretty resilient to "real" changes.
And I will say before I get started, I love my little Thinkpad.

With that out of the way, whose genius idea was to make these two changes in Thinkpads:

  1. Put a screenshot key where the context menu should be. I am not sure it is literally Print Screen, but that's beyond the point.
  2. Swap function and control. At least it can be set right via settings. Although in the BIOS, so it's not accessible for everyone
Mine is like 4 years old, so maybe they corrected these travesties.

Anyway, this post is brought to you by spur of the moment posting AND my work laptop (and HP ZBook) not having a button to quickly turn off the touchpad.
REMEMBER THOSE? "...and laptops had some "Fn key" combo to toggle the touchpad, which was the style at the time" [1] . This HP does not have one, and the deeper I am focused into typing something, the bigger the chance that I activate it by mistake.

For example, just while typing this post, I got a context menu and point moved around like 5 times. And if this was my personal computer, I would just disable it. But for work I need to click around in Outlook (even worse, the disgrace that is New Outlook...) [2].
I don't quite get why they keep removing useful things like this to replace them with (checking the top row) a dedicated "project" key. That's been Windows+P since forever.
Maybe, just taking a guess as I am typing, manufacturers had to spend too much support time with people wondering how come their touchpad stopped working? And laptops returned because they activated the key combo by mistake.

I feel better already. Who knew having a blog could be so useful for venting. Maybe I don't need a therapist anymore! [3].

Footnotes
  1. There is no better way to date yourself than Simpsons references.
  2. Both "New Outlook" and "New Teams" have worse keyboard navigation than their previous versions, a topic for another post.
  3. Yes I do.

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