I’ve been a laptop user early in my life, I love the form factor. Up until now, I haven’t ever had a keboard break, or a keycap missing. I knew these were really common problems I just didn’t encounter. For me, it wasn’t normal to be loosing keys, and whenever I saw a laptop without a keycap, I cringed.
And then it’s September 2024. Two keys of my two favorite laptops break: the “C” on my Thinkpad X1 Nano G3, and the “D” on my work’s Thinkpad T14. Both really useful keys. Both key hinges’ broken. Both keyboards needed to be replaced.
Thankfully, the T14 keyboard was replaced by the company I work for (but with a cheaper model, and poorly installed). But for my lovely X1 Nano, warranty did not cover keyboard replacement (I knew that from the beginning, though), the replacement part is nowhere to be found as a consumer in the local Arg. market, and importing it is fairly expensive. So yeah, I’m now one of those with a duct-taped keycap. I think it’ll last a lot like that, as well as my heart ache.
Moral of the story: fuck companies that don’t easily sell replacement parts. And I’m not talking about the keyboard, I’m talking about two effin 0.1cent plastic key hinges. How come a whole keyboard needs to be replaced at the expense of one key breaking. What a waste!
Taped “C” on the Thinkpad X1 Nano
Poorly installed keyboard on T14. Both clips are uncliped. It takes skill!
Also, are the keycaps supposed to travel that deep? I feel the key slot borders when typing and it feels really uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because the keyboard is not clipped? I feel this replacement keyboard is of a very worse quality than the original one 🙁
PS: Thank you Whatsapp for being the easiest image compression tool.