Lenovo Ideapad 3 Laptop

Okay, my Lenovo came today, and I may never use it often enough to get used to it. Oh, it seems to work fine but the keyboard is impossible. Because the key spacing is so different than anything I have used in the past 15 years, I have to hunt and peck and, even then, it screws up. For example, in the next paragraph, I will try to retype what I have typed here without looking at the keys.

zoksh, mh zlrnobo vsmrf yofsh, snf zi msy nrbrt udr iy ogyrn rnouhjh yo hry udrf iy. zoh, iy drrmd yo eotk ginr nuy yhr krhynostf id impoddinlrf. Nrvsjudr yhr kry dpsvinh id do figgrtnr yhsn snhyinh zi hsbr udrf in yhr psdy 215 hrsgtd. zi hsbr yo huny snf prvk snf, rbrn yhrnm, iy dvtred up. Fogt rcsmplr, in yhr nrcy psthtsph, i eill yty yo tryypr ehsy zi hsbr yyprf hrtr eiyhouy lookinh sy yhr krhyd.

Back to hunting and pecking, the keys are practically on top of one another and I don't know why they did that. The keyboard is bigger than the Apple keyboards I am used to but, perhaps because of the dumbass number keys to the right, the keys are spaced way too close together. I'm not sure that I'll get used to this.

The keys have a nice feel, when depressed, but the spacing is weird. Other than that, I think I'd like it. It's fast enough, it looks good, and the price wasn't bad. The key spacing is going to be a problem, though. I am not a hunt and pecker. I usually type about a hundred words a minute, maybe a little less with the arthritis, but probably still close to that. Can I get used to it? I don't know. Since I have a couple of perfectly good Macs, maybe not.

Trying to figure out how to shut this thing off now.

 

Okay, shutting it off wasn't so hard. I'm back on my Mac. Maybe I'll take some time and see if I can learn to manipulate the Lenovo keyboard well enough to hit the right key once in awhile.

 

That's weird. Maybe the Chinese have smaller hands. (Lenovo was IBM's house brand before they got out of the hardware business and sold it to the Chicom.) Actually, Lenovo bought IBM's PC line in 2005.

I can't recall the last time I used the keyboard on a laptop...I always use a wireless keyboard with an integrated pointing device (touch pad, trackball, thumb ball, etc.) off to the side where your number pad is. The same goes for the number pad...I bought an external one decades ago (because I data-enter with my left hand) that I used the heck out of in my career and as treasurer for non-profits, but rarely need in my personal life. To try to squeeze a number pad on the limited real estate of a laptop makes no sense. Where's the need?

Another side issue in doing something like that with a laptop is the keyboard and the screen are fixed in an offset manner relative to each other (as opposed to external keyboards that can be moved left-to-right); in other words, look at how far the center of the typing keyboard is to the left of the center of the screen, because the keypad shoves it over.





That's really poor ergonomics. It's not real significant in that tiny footprint, so it will only give you a tiny crick...and being Quasimodo over a laptop without an external keyboard & monitor do that to me anyway.

 

The standard Apple MacBook keyboard is on the small side too, and it took me a while to get used to it. Once I did, though, I bought a standard Apple keyboard for my desktop Macs as well, so that I wasn't switching back and forth between the larger, ergonomic keyboard I used to use, and the MacBook keyboard. This is another level of small, however.

Yes, @John Brunner. That's another problem - the standard QWERTY keyboard is set to the left of the center. I think I could get used to that but the keys are just a bit tighter together than the already small Apple keyboard, and that really throws me off. If this were all I had, I'm sure I'd get used to it, but, switching back and forth between this and the Mac setup may be a problem.

@Alan Sidlo, yeah, I think the Lenovo is a good, moderately low-end computer. It doesn't have the feel of a low-end laptop and I like pretty much everything about it but the keyboard.

 

Back in the early days I managed purchasing, vendor contracts & inventory for a reseller that had 600+ hardware & software vendors and offered over 55,000 SKUs. So many businesses came and went. I was there for the first "Look & Feel" lawsuits when Windows hit the scene. From then on, it was [mostly] all about price...and the broad availability (and cost) of hardware and software that only an open architecture can give you. You could rightly argue that Apple is "better," but for the vast majority of us, the extra cost is not justifiable...the alternative is "good enough."

Regarding Apple's hardware user interface...there's [almost] an infinite number of nice IBM-compatible keyboards out there at a pretty good price.

 

I am still having trouble with the keypad on the Lenovo, but I can type reasonably well on it now. It's just not an easy feel as far as hand placement goes, so I have to keep checking my fingers. Overall, though, this isn't a bad laptop for a Windows machine.

I use it for Zoom meetings, as my Smart Recovery meetings are held at our local library and it's easier to connect the Windows machine to the large screen TV in the meeting room than the Mac. Once i figured out how to connect the Mac, it's probably not so hard either. but the TV is preconfigured for a Windows machine so, since I have one, I am using that and it doesn't require any typing beyond logging into my account.

 

I'd still get a wireless keyboard for it. The problem then is if you're using the laptop's screen, it might put the screen too far away from you.

 

I didn't think that I'd be able to but I have gotten past the weird keyboard setup on this computer and can type fine on it now, although not as well as I can on the Apple keyboard. It's not a bad computer for a Windows machine.

 

I've been using the Lenovo for the Zoom component of the SMART Recovery program that I host, but have been using it for other things from time to time, trying to get used to it. I'm getting close to mastering the dumb-ass keyboard, although I'm a lot faster on a Mac keyboard, but I'm still having trouble finding things and, at this point, the most annoying thing is that when I click on something to open it or to click into a URL, it more often brings up a box, as if I had right-clicked instead, and I haven't quite figured out just where on the trackpad I need to click in order to get the results I'm looking for. I could use the Mac trackpad for a right-click if I wanted to but I have always used keyboard shortcuts for that instead, and I can click pretty much anywhere I want on the Mac trackpad to go to a URL or to bring up an app. Maybe I'll figure it out eventually, but, in the meantime the damned boxes are in the way half the time.

 

I hate using the trackpad on my Lenovo laptop. In my work years, I always carried a wireless keyboard and a trackball with me. At home (a I mentioned) the wireless keyboard has a touchpad that functions as the mouse, and it has Left/Right buttons. I cannot imagine trying to Click 'n Drag without buttons.

 

I"ve been using trackpads with my Macs for years. Even with my iMacs and Mac Mini, I have an external trackpad that I use, so I haven't used a mouse in a while. The one on the Lenovo is much different, however.

 

I used this for year and years in my career and at home.

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I liked it better than a mouse because it was stationary, so did not require a lot of desk real estate. And there was no hitting the edge of the pad when the cursor was still in the middle of the screen. I developed a big hard knot on one of the joints of my thumb (I forget which joint) that went away when I stopped using it and switched to something else. Like you, I can't recall the last time I used a mouse.