And they have totally messed up the “J” mouse that I used to love before I finally broke down and learned how to use a touchpad.
I wonder what you do with so many computers. I have 1 laptop, a Lenovo Legion Pro 5 and that is it. I can do everything with this one what I want/need to do. Do you have different programs on different computers, instead of having all the software on 1? How does that work?
I have a T490 that I really like.
And it’s apparent that a lot of Linux devs use Thinkpads since they are so well supported.
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I love my T495. Could not be happier to have paid about 175$ USD for a used one in mint condition. Bluefin runs like a charm on it and everything works, fingerprint reader included.
I have a beefy desktop computer, and I mainly use my laptop for office work and classroom presentations, so it’s more than powerful enough for my needs.
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I am totes jelly.
I wish I had a fingerprint reader on mine, and on my desktop.
Many of us here are developers, sysadmins or just help with testing, docs, etc.
For some testing scenarios you just need multiple machines for different reasons. Usually we will have 1 “production” machine that we treat like gold.
Other machines are used to keep an old version of something (OS or particular complex software config, different H/W architecture) that we have a long running testing / development project hosted. Dedicating a machine for that one purpose makes it efficient to bounce back to the project to tweak something really quick.
Other reasons might be different locations (in the house, office or even vehicle) where we frequently need a machine.
Even in retirement I have 5 machines - 2 laptops and 3 raspberry pi’s that make up what is left of my lab.
There are reasons … 
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Sad, but true. However despite not being as good as 10-20 years ago, current ThinkPad keyboards are still dramatically better than those on any other laptops IMO.
I still have two ancient ThinkPads I never threw away, and the one on the T23 (still IBM branded) is unsurprisingly the best (my T41’s keyboard is disconnected and in a box somewhere so I can’t compare that one atm), but the W530 from ~12 years ago is almost as good. The X1 Extreme (2019?) that I’m typing on now is still very good, and my P1 from 2023 is decent enough, though a little shallow.
So yeah, those of us who’ve been using them for many years know the difference, but I’d still take the latest ThinkPad keyboards over the terrible ones on other laptops, hands down.
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I’m not doing anything particularly interesting with all of them as some other developers do (as klmcw mentioned).
I only recently beefed up the ~12yo W530 with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD and use it as a media server and another place for Syncthing to keep some files backed up in realtime. I have plans to do a lot more with it like handling VPN duties for the home network, maybe setup pi-hole and a caching proxy, and maybe have it act as a Nextcloud server.
The X1 Yoga was just sitting on a shelf until recently, and after putting in a new 1TB SSD and installing Linux it’s a nice lightweight laptop/tablet hybrid that comes in handy from time to time.
The newer and much more powerful X1 Extreme is in the living room, where I still use it quite often (I’m typing this on it now). It’s still strong enough for me to use as a development machine, and since it’s lighter than the P1 with the 4090 (the power brick on that thing!) I’ve been opting to take that with me when I travel lately.
The P1 is my main machine that I work on all day. Even with its extra weight it’s still quite portable, more so than something like a P16 that I had also considered. I don’t travel as much as some do, but I do take 3-4 week trips a couple of times a year, so I suppose that’s why I keep buying laptops and haven’t had a desktop/tower in over 12 years.
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Yeah, they’re really nice to have.
It’s not always flawless, though. I’m running Aurora, so I don’t know about Bluefin, but sddm hardly ever lets me unlock with the fingerprint reader, so I need to fix that one of these days. But sudo and Bitwarden work consistently with the fingerprint reader, so that’s really convenient. With Bitwarden in particular, I only have to type my annoyingly long password once after a reboot, and from then on I can unlock both the desktop app and the browser plug-in by fingerprint.
I had Linux Mint on my X1 Extreme and P1 before, and the fingerprint reader always worked under Cinnamon, so that was really nice. I think there’s just an sddm issue I need to figure out and then it should be working everywhere on those. The X1 Yoga has an under-supported reader that only works with a strange Python-based project, and some day I’ll try to get that working under Aurora as well.
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Would love to see that one merged 
I might be able to help testing. Although i just have one tuxedo laptop so I would have to rebase to a testing image every now and then. Maintaining and contributing the Tuxedo mod is out-of-scope at the moment but I’ll reconsider in a few months when I have more computer time.
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Do you mean the TrackPoint? I’ve been addicted to “the nub” for quite a long time, and haven’t noticed any decline over the years. If anything, they seem a little less flaky now because in the past they would sometimes cause the mouse pointer to wander off randomly. I think it’s terrible that they dropped the TrackPoint for a couple of the newest ThinkPads, and I’ll never buy one of those. While I do use the touch pad and even a mouse for some things, I still probably use the TrackPoint more than 50% of the time and would hate to lose it.
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Yeah, It seems Zenith originally coined the name J-Mouse - that name stuck for many of us.
In the IBM ThinkPad days it was much taller - easier to locate without looking. I am not certain at which point the design got messed up but I am remembering it was after the ThinkPad line was sold to Lenovo.
My big fingers could not adapt to that thing without inadvertent key presses of arbitrary surrounding keys. But decent touchpads arrived soon; which is when I transitioned. I have always hated carrying extra h/w between meetings. Most of my colleagues carried one of those tiny little mice. Again, large fingers/hands made that impossible for me.
Agreed! It served the purpose incredibly well. I hated to lose it.
I believe this to be a pic of the original design (first pic). You will notice how it resembles a large eraser from the end of a pencil - and not just a nub.
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I’ve been using a Dell XPS13 9360 & 9315. Everything just works with the 9360. The cam doesn’t work yet on the 9315, so I plug my phone in via USB and use it as the webcam when I have meetings.
I just bought a refurb HP Elitebook 840 G6 to use as a shared laptop in a startup lab. Everything I need works on it except the fingerprint reader. Not sure if the security card reader works but didn’t need that anyway.
I’m not a developer or gamer. I just need to communicate, research, and collect and analyze data, so I mainly just use a browser and Google Workspace.
Since my processing needs are pretty low, I’m more focused on Linux compatibility and lots of RAM.