laptop advice time...

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 10:12:28PM -0400, Andrej Marjan wrote:
> I was thinking about adding one to my own Thinkpad, then thought to check
> how full disk encryption plays with SSDs. Then my head exploded.
> 
> Lots of controversy about whether it's ever safe, whether it's OK so long
> as you encrypt the device before using it for anything sensitive, whether
> you need robust TRIM support to not kill the device with full disk
> encryption, the sorry state of TRIM support in currently shipping distros...

TRIM helps performance, but other than that should not actually affect
the lifespan of the device.

> Is there really a concern here or did I just stumble on a bunch of outdated
> discussion? There's no way I'd use unencrypted storage of any sort in a
> laptop.
> 
> As for Thinkpad keyboards, I used to *love* the old IBM-style keyboards,
> and I have one at home. Then I got a new machine with a chiclet keyboard at
> work, and now that I'm switching between them daily, I'm not 100% satisfied
> with either. The chiclets feel a little better than the old ones, but they
> include a few truly stupid layout decisions.

Layout issues are always a problem.  For my desktop I used to use
the KT800 from keytronics, which had a large L shaped enter key and a
small 9normal key size) backspace with '\' to the left of backspace.
I have given up on ever really finding more keyboards like that and am
now using the keytronic E03600U2 instead which is an exact layout clone
of the IBM AT keyboard (except with windows keys added where one would
expect them to be).  I find the layout on my W530 to be quite good for
a laptop, at least when you order it with the US layout.  There is no
helping the canadian french layout that so many stores in Canada seem
to think they should sell these days.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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