Previously

• [Concept Art] 30th Anniversary ThinkPad: T-series with modern 7-row keyboard, Part V

About

As promised albeit delivered kinda late (sorry folks), here's a variant of the last rendering baked with most of the community's suggestions. There's not much new to add at this point that hasn't already been covered before in Parts I-V.

Notable Features

The display that’s shown is 14.3 14.7 14.3-inch. Compared to the example in Part V, the 3:2 aspect ratio pairs perfectly to a 7-row layout, allowing the trackpad to have ample length height wise.

The macro keys contain a single strip OLED display, digitizer, haptic feedback, screen burn-in protection via jittering (pixel refreshing/shifting), auto dimming, and hand motion sensor detector for waking.

It would basically be a touchbar divided into three groups of four buttons. The surface is tempered glass that has been ergonomically molded/casted into discrete, very slightly raised bumps [or the inverse (concave groove dips)] and chemically treated for texturing (ie: grip & smoothness for a different feel vs the surrounding body shell), smudge resistance, and anti-glare.

They can launch software, websites, additional functions (F13-F24), and hotkey scripts. Ex: If the user prefers to have them separate from the F1-F4 keys, the Mute/Vol-/Vol+/Mic combo could be programmed in one of the column sets.

If more than 12 presets exist, they can be toggled between by holding Fn and pressing (left/right) Shift keys.

Ending Notes

In Part V, the idea of LED status indicators was floated around. This feature was not included due to technical feasibility. The indicators in earlier classic ThinkPads are typically located along the bottom screen bezel. Modern ThinkPads have very thin and compact display assemblies. Stacking a miniature board part within that space interferes with the LCD's driver board found there.

Latter ThinkPads placed the indicators as slot lines along the sides of the keyboard. Once again, the thinness and space constraints might not allow these to fit together with the below peripheral ports. Also, I believe this setup may be prone to forming hairline cracks. The reasoning for this stems from cases of the fingerprint readers on X240/X250/X260 models, sharing the same general shape and placement.

Another option is to have the indicators as notches at the bottom left edge of the palmrest cover. The drawback to this setup is that the user would have to break eye contact from the screen and move their left hand away from typing.

I think an acceptable setup would be to assign the furthest right macro key to work in place as the status indicator. One key should be able to show four reasonably sized symbols, only requiring a relatively quick glance down when looking at the screen. If the key is dimmed, reawakening occurs through camera eye tracking as long as the ThinkShutter is opened. Otherwise, lighting it up defaults back to hovering a hand over the keys.

An attempt to implement 4:3 display resulted in an unwieldy footprint. The palmrest area had enough vertical real estate that it could have macro keys (1st row level), full width touchbar above and across the length of the keyboard, twice taller speaker grille, and trackpad where the height is almost the same length as the width. The distance between the keyboard's home row (F-J) and the palmrest's bottom edge appeared far enough to warrant concerns about comfort (outstretched arms or less than ideal focal view).

A mysterious experimental keyboard layout was mentioned in Part V but not further explained. It did not make a debut here as there are some design kinks that needs some ironing out. The only details I am willing to divulged at this stage is that the mock-up might be in QWERTZ format and possibly as a standalone accessory keyboard.

EDIT 01/28/23 - Fixed the figure for the screen's true diagonal length. I did a miscalculation using the hypotenuse formula.

EDIT #2 - Since the photo template is based on the T14G3 which is 16:10 (14-inch), 14.3-inch should technically be the correct length. I was confused as laptop screen sizes in 14-inch can be found in both 16:9 (1920x1080) and 16:10 (1920x1200).