Yes.
I love the TrackPoint because I know how to touch type and it turns the mouse into just another key.
I would love a track point on a Purism laptop. Like I suggested in some other forum post at some point I would go even further and have them āaccidentallyā make it so replacement thinkpad keyboards would fit into the Librem chassis. That would solve the issue about not being able to provide different locale versions as well. Let Lenovo do it. Replacements are abundant 
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This strikes me as a really good idea, and I wonder why it hasnāt done by some other company before now. I also wonder how hard it would be to find a company willing to make a keyboard with the same dimensions and connector as a Thinkpad keyboard.
@nicole.faerber, Any thoughts on this idea?
A neat idea, indeed
But Iām afraid that is a major undertaking. Laptop mechanics look kind of simple but changing them is super hard since you need to update the tooling to make the parts. And this is super expensive! So itās not as āeasyā as it may seem, Iām afraid.
We totally understand that the keyboard is a very important part of the device and we are doing our best to make it as good as we can.
Cheers
nicole
Sorry, but you are not trying hard enough if it does not have a TrackPoint. What is the real problem with this? Can We openly discuss it?
Sure we can discuss this!
If not looking at the Thinkpad spare part market it is close to impossible to find keyboard makers implementing a track point. And we are not in a position to develop something like this on our own or paying a keyboard maker for it. I wish we would be! Like I mentioned before, mechanical parts are a pain to develop and make. Development cost (so called NRE), tooling cost and finally minimum order quantities (MOQ) are super high and bind a LOT of cash. We are talking about high six digit figures here, just for having a keyboard! If we would be an Apple, Dell or Lenovo, sure, that would work with their high quantities. Then such an investment comes down to a just a few $ per laptop or even zero, MOQ would not be a problem either. But we are not in such a position, we need to leverage what we can find and we need to see that what we find has some kind of longer term availability too.
Are we happy about that? No! If I could how I would like I can assure to you that our devices would look and feel much different. A lot! But right now we have to make the best from the options we have at hand. And we are making steady progress! Our quantities are rising and with it our development budget is rising too. With each generation we can and are doing more of the things we want to do. But it takes time, Iām afraid. We chose the slow path, without looking for capital from typical silicon valley investment market since this would force us onto a path that we do not want to take, sacrificing many of our core values just for the sake of profit maximization. So we grow slowly, more organic but with good conscience.
Cheers
nicole
Is this really that hard? I would assume that TrackPoint is an off the shelf part:
It does not really even seem that complicated, I think I could most likely put together the board myself from components (the sensor itself is I assume some standard component). It takes around 3mm of space on the back of the keyboard and keyboard has to accommodate the passthrough hole which I expect would need to be handled by a keyboard manufacturer. On Lenovo keyboards it was wired by a joined cable with the keyboard cable, but should be easy to hook it up to Embedded Controller by a separate cable.
Based on the bord identifier, It seems to be extremely simple with trivial pinout:
- Mousebutton0
- Mousebutton1
- Mousebutton2
- 5V
- Reset
- Clock
- Data
- Ground
This is not the problem - PCB and components on PCBs is pretty easy (except you have chip shortage like we have now). What I tried to convey is that making the mechanical changes to integrate that into a keyboard is the very expensive piece.
To give you an exampleā¦ in the Librem 5 we have a battery pack. The pack consists of a battery cell enclosed in a seemingly simple pretty square plastic box, not much fuzz, you would think. Making the mold for that pretty simple plastic case did cost us over $50k! Just for the mold! Which is a 300kg piece of steelā¦ And here we were only talking about a pretty simple plastioc injection mold, not a complex multi part metal stamp for the keyboard base and the injections molds for the plastic caps on top. Plus we would also have to modify the mold for the laptopās C-shell, which holds the keyboard and with the current design has meterial between the keys - which must not be in there where the track point needs to go. And a ton more of these things.
I am a fan of these track points myself, having used Thinkpads for most of my career. But honestly, before I put a massive amount of money into this tiny detail Iād rather solve bigger problems with the money. Once we have more cash at hand for development we will do more customization - track point for sure is on our wish list.
PS: There also used to be patents on that track point in keyboard thing which was one of the reasons, I was told, it was never widely used. IIRC only IBM/Lenovo, Dell and some Fujitsu/Siemens use(d) it.
Cheers
nicole
I realize you might not like it, but I do think that the best interim solution is the one I suggested. Buy the L14 and a separate thinkpad keyboard. If linux laptops take off, purism or some other company will take the risk and invest in creating a laptop with a keyboard that has a trackpoint.
I believe you now have enough information at least to make an estimate of that number.
However you can also see from Nicoleās responses that it is a question of priorities. If someone canāt solve all the worldās problems, he or she chooses some problems to solve.
Just between you and me, in my opinion one of the benefits of a larger screen on a laptop is not the screen itself but the reduced compromises on the keyboard! (despite then the compromise on the total weight of the laptop). Having said that, Iāve never owned a keyboard with a trackpoint so it is not something that I pine for.
I think the more interesting thing here is why are laptop keyboards still customized on a seemingly per model basis instead of having a standard connector and size allowing for 3rd party laptop keyboards that work from generation to generation and can be dropped into different models of the same sizing format? I donāt see this as a purism problem, but rather an industry wide missed opportunity.
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51nb makes motherboards for old ThinkPads, every batch is sold easily even though it is pricey because of low quantity (I am writing this on X2100 51nb motherboard for X201s) and they even needed to fight Lenovo in court. I think the market and buyers are there. Currently, for TrackPoint, you can go either ThinkPad or EliteBook or 51nb motherboard for old ThinkPad. I think selling 10000 more units because of TrackPoint is possible.
ThinkPad users are a huge group and they would welcome alternatives, because of the lowering of quality. Itās an opportunity. I would buy two machines right away if they had a quality keyboard with TrackPoint. I would even pay a top dollar premium for the keyboard. I could imagine up to 200$ premium.
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After a thorough investigation, I found out, that I can make a fully functional USB TrackPoint from the hardware I have at hand. Using Arduino PRO Micro, TrackPoint from ThinkPad X220 keyboard, 100k resistor and 2.2uF capacitor.
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Dropping in a few years later to mention that when my x220 broke recently, I ended up buying another Thinkpad. Despite Lenovo being a pretty bad hardware manufacturer at this point, I canāt use a laptop without a trackpoint, as it has become absolutely essential to my workflow. Once again suggesting you add one, as although Purism was a name I remembered, the lack of a trackpoint made it a no-go for me.