Red pointy thing
I'm always surprised that the red pointy thing never made it to 'proper' keyboards. Much easier to use than a mouse where you have to keep taking your hands off the keyboard.
Lenovo's ThinkPad range is a bit like a pair of sensible shoes. It might not look flashy but there's something comfortable about its configuration, and the recently released ThinkPad T14s Gen 1 AMD is no different. The ThinkPad T14 series (there's also one with Intel silicon) replaces the previous T400 series, albeit only in …
Also, there are people (like me, and some of my colleagues) that hate the touchpad with a vengeance. I never managed to get used to it: I use it when I really really have to, but it always come unnatural to me.
Being mostly always in the same place my laptop now stay closed in a corner and I use an external full mechanical keyboard, mouse and monitors, but when I'm on the move the red button feel much more natural, if of course inferior to a proper mouse.
If anything, i would welcome a model without the touchpad: I've to actualy disable it, or I tend to accidentaly trigger random mouse movements with my hands otherwise.
P.S. Lenovo also sells external keyboards with trackpoint, and historically i remember some proper large one with it... never managed to get one, tough...
Besides being better located, the trackpoint is far more accurate than any trackpad (or touchscreen) that I have used. Fortunately, I have a Lenovo keyboard with a trackpoint for my desktop. Unfortunately it is not Bluetooth enabled so for my M$ tablet I have to make do.
"Also, there are people (like me, and some of my colleagues) that hate the touchpad with a vengeance. I never managed to get used to it: I use it when I really really have to, but it always come unnatural to me.
If anything, i would welcome a model without the touchpad: I've to actualy disable it, or I tend to accidentaly trigger random mouse movements with my hands otherwise.
P.S. Lenovo also sells external keyboards with trackpoint, and historically i remember some proper large one with it... never managed to get one, tough..."
I detest the scratchy thingy too.
Lenovo sells wired (USB) keyboards with trackpoint. Also available through Amazon, about $60 USD. There is also a Bluetooth model, but it is silly expensive. I've been thinking about the bluetooth version as a replacement for my Logitech Dinovo cordless when it dies. Be nice to have a trackpoint for the desktop computer as well as the X-61.
I don't use the nipple myself, but have no problem with it being there for others to use. I'm surprised the author took a swipe at the trackpad buttons however. I hate buttonless trackpads. If I recall, Lenovo did experiment with removing the buttons on the T440. It was an abject disaster, the clickpad was widely hated (I had one and it was awful) and Lenovo backtracked just one year later and restored the buttons, albeit not the ones at the bottom of the trackpad.
I do agree however that Lenovo doggedly clinging to 16:9 panels isn't a smart move. Plenty of other manufacturers have started to introduce 16:10 and 3:2 screens on productivity laptops, it's a pity Lenovo are holding out here.
Heh. Old Dell laptop here, pointy thing in the middle of the keyboard and a touchpad with not one, not two, but five clicky buttons.
I am however in the 'hate the touchpad with a vengeance' club - it just doesn't work for me for the sort of things I do - and despite using a Libretto for some time (years ago) with the pointy thing on the side of the screen and the buttons on the back, I still don't use the pointy thing.
External mouse for me, please, on a mouse mat. Yeah, I know, get with the times, Grandpa... YMMV.
I can't say I've ever tried the pointy thing enough to decide whether to like it or not, but I certainly dislike trackpads without physical buttons. Somehow I frequently manage to do move+clicks, meaning I do not reliably click the thing I wanted to click. My usual solution is to remap some of the more pointless keys on the keyboard to function as clicks, as a fall back.
"I don't use the nipple myself, but have no problem with it being there for others to use. I'm surprised the author took a swipe at the trackpad buttons however. I hate buttonless trackpads."
He's simply revealing his biases: he uses / likes MacBooks, the epitome of buttonless trackpads and TrackPoint-free keyboards.
...and just one of the numerous reasons I despise using them. The buttonless trackpad is a moron idea bought into by blind Apple faith. They. Are. Horrible.
The buttonless trackpad is a moron idea bought into by blind Apple faith. They. Are. Horrible.
Sorry, this just ticks me off. I've got to vent because I suffer.
Pity me: I have a work-provided Mac - with all the multitude of enterprise-employed baristas we have to make our product work on those, too. The bloody thing weighs a ton and will burn your lap if you ever use it as a laptop for more than 5 minutes (the T14 review mentions efficient cooling, so this is on topic). Your relationship with the keyboard is strained, not just because the keyboard itself doesn't satisfy, but because there is this ginormous touchpad always between you. As a result the sharp edges of the laptop hurt my wrists when I type, and every now and then I actually touch the pad inadvertently, to unpredictable effects. I'd happily disable it, but there doesn't seem a way to do it on a Mac.
External mice are not easy, either - can't find a mouse with USB-C, and there are no other ports at all. Got 2 docks for office and home so I can work with a normal mouse. But if you need to use the "laptop" at an odd location - this includes presenting in a conference room - bring your own dock. This might explain why the touchpad can't be disabled - will save you in a pinch if you've forgotten the dock...
My conclusion is that the gigantic touchpad exists for people who don't use the keyboard but love those multi-finger gestures. I have forgotten what those are useful for - I never need to change the size of windows or zoom in or out or whatever once things are set up. But I am sure the pad is more essential than the keyboard for some, and I am probably not the target audience. In that case, however, why not get a keyboardless device with a touch screen? An iPad, maybe?
[Aside: I am very happy with my personal T-series Lenovo. It even ages well.]
Well - they do exist at least.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00F3U4TQS/?coliid=I1GJJFUPK7F2EV&colid=35UKOL0BU0D6E&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
I never quite got around to being fully happy with the trackpointer (cl1t-mouse), but loathe trackpads so tend to stick with a trackball anyway.
What would make sense (for me at least) would be a keyboard with a trackball located just beneath the space bar.
What would make sense (for me at least) would be a keyboard with a trackball located just beneath the space bar.
I saw an interesting approach on an old keyboard: a rotating bar that could slide from side to side on its axle. Rotating moved the mouse pointer up and down the screen, sliding the bar left or right on the axle moved the pointer left and right. Unfortunately, the buttons to click were separate, you could not simply depress the bar, so if anything, it required two hands to operate quickly, or one serially - move the mouse, then click a button.
It obviously never took off.
I still see them here in Finland; I think it was invented here. Not very often, of course, but the user's I've known — colleagues, mostly early middle age ladies IME — swear by them.
They're (also?) available separately from the keyboard; most (all?) specimens I've seen are of the type mounted on an approximately keyboard-sized tray that you put the keyboard on to. The weight of the kb, and I suspect the grippy material on top of the tray, holds the two in place in relation to each other.
Norman reminisced: "I saw an interesting approach on an old keyboard: a rotating bar that could slide from side to side on its axle."
These are brilliant! The one I used did mouse clicks if you pressed it. Very intuitive and easy to use as well as similar speed and accuracy to a mouse.
They were part of the arsenal of weird and wonderful contraptions given to colleagues when normal kit was unsuitable and it's the only 'alternative' product that I got on with as well as the normal tech it replaced.
Thats a RollerMouse. I've never seen one combined with a keyboard, they're recommended for poor souls like me with "tennis elbow" (lateral epicondylitis) after years of using a conventional mouse. And once you get used to them they are fantastic. You can press the roller bar for left click but the first thing I did with mine was reduce the sensitivity to minimum, because it was driving me mad. They did take off but they're not something you'll find in PC World, they tend to be available from specialists in ergonomics.
The very first Macintosh laptop had a trackball, IIRC. Not located below the keyboard, but AFAICR configurable: You could put it to the left or the right of the keyboard, with the keyboard itself moving to the other side. Or replace the trackball with a numeric keypad, if you were into number entry.
But this was ages ago, at least early nineties, perhaps late eighties. Where I lived at the time, Uppsala in Sweden, Macs were pretty darn thin on the ground, and I never saw a portable one. Only read about it in PC Magazine, BYTE, and the like.
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The rubber nipple can be removed, leaving a plastic stub that is below the level of the surrounding keys.
It's not particularly aesthetically pleasant, but it gets it out from under your fingers.
Me? I struggle with laptops which don't have a trackpoint, and I disable any touchpad on a laptop if I can.
Not just KDE - middle click paste is an X-Windows thing that seems to be implemented in every X-based desktop environment I've ever used.
It's one of my core, must-have features and is also one of the many reasons that I remain wedded to ThinkPads.
Every time I have to use Windows or a Mac I end up swearing each time the last thing I selected doesn't get pasted when I middle click...
Sadly it's a feature that isn't easy to implement on other OSes either - there used to be a freeware implementation on older versions of Windows but I believe it stopped working on Win8 upwards. And on the Mac the only utility I found was deeply unsatisfactory: it's not just that highlighting auto-copies and middle click pastes, but that it does it to a separate buffer... It's immensely useful to pick up a username and password combo in one hit using the two clipboard buffers.
As for the trackpads - I'm definitely in the camp of wanting physical buttons and I prefer the trackpad (with all 'tapping' actions disabled because tap-to-click is a really stupid idea), however I use the middle button above the trackpad, which technically belongs to the nipple.
I'm not too sure about the idea of the trackpad moving and giving a 'thunk' though. I really prefer ones that don't move at all although the one I use on a Yoga 370 is way nicer than the weird bouncy one they tried on the T 530/430 and X 230 series machines - those were appalling and I'm glad I never had to use one
I've been using ThinkPads for more than 2 decades and liked the trackpoint until I got RSI of my thumb during an intensive diagramming phase. I still use it for short sessions but plug in a mouse for serious ones. In all cases I disable the track pad as I keep moving it with my wrist as I type.
I think when Matthew said "it’s not something you instinctively want to use," he really meant to say "it’s not something I instinctively want to use."
Clearly the reason they still have it is that there are enough customers who will never buy anything other than a Thinkpad because of it.
I first used a TrackPoint as a kid on the Thinkpad 755C my father brought home from work back in 1994, tried a built-in Trackball on the NEC Versa which succeeded it, used a TrackPoint on the Thinkpad 380ED I got to keep when they upgraded, as well as getting exposed to various machines with touchpads then and now.
No contest. I always turn off touchpads because their "palm rejection" is garbage.
Pointing sticks with physical mouse buttons are the best solution for actual mobile computing and I'm very glad that my Pandora palmtop PC and its successor, the Pyra, do their best to approximate them using their analog sticks.
I think when Matthew said "it’s not something you instinctively want to use," he really meant to say "it’s not something I instinctively want to use."
I have grown to loathe this use of the second person "you" when the author really means "I" but is trying to project their opinions onto me. More examples are variations of "X makes you feel Y" and "You have to Z". No, that's what's happening for you, not for me. Every time I hear this construction, it breaks the flow and makes me question what is going on.
As you were.
you’ve got to appreciate Lenovo’s ability to craft a computer, which remains unparalleled
I’ve got a Lenovo, and I’ve had a few others in the past. They’re very good, no-doubt. But unparalleled? No. They are far from unparalleled. They’re very good - but, in my view, they aren’t the best you can get.
That said, I haven’t yet had a rubbish Lenovo - so they’re right up there in terms of consistency. They’re consistently very good.
A long time ago my employer had a lot of T40's and while I like Lenovo (or IBM at the time), I did not want to pay the same price. I got a R40 which was the same spec but a little thicker. In everyday use it was fine, but I did have a number of different PSU's around from the various T/X series from work. I plugged the R40 into one of the smaller ones and it made an odd noise. It got worse over a period of time and it was the charging circuit. While a T or X would work with the larger or smaller and just charged the battery at a different rate, the R series took offenc - new MB.
Shortly after I visited a friend to do an installation and I had my laptop open on the desk and she noticed it was getting low on power. I was under the desk and then heard that same distinctive noise. I asked from under the desk "did you just plug my laptop in ?", She replied "Yes" so I said "Oh great, you have just blown my laptop up"
Since then I would prefer to buy a refurb'd T or X - and they are generally rock solid
I've been buying second user T series thinkpads for 20 years.
Before that, I had two 365 and a 380 (from before the T- A- R- or X- banding), and I have to say that the 365's were seriously fragile (the keyboard was hinged to reveal the interchangeable CD or floppy drives and memory). The 380 was more robust but was insanely heavy.
I had a 600 as an out-of-hours terminal, and this was the one that appeared to set the following T- series estetic.
All of these devices had a trackpoint, and I think that there was one on the Thinkpad 700 series that were made in the mid '90s
I've actually only stopped using the T20 that was my first personal T- series Thinkpad a few years ago (don't think I've thrown it away yet) but I still use a T23 as an always on stepping stone into my network from outside (it was acting as a full-blown firewall, but the Ethernet ports and processor were too slow when I had fibre broadband installed), and the fact that it has a serial port allowed me to talk to the service processor in my RS/6000 43P allowing me to turn it on remotely.
I still have my T430s that is 7+ years old. The T series has always been the most dependable, unlike the cheapo E series (bargepole territory). While slim, being carbon fibre enhanced it is a tough as old boots. I've taken it seven times around the world (literally) on trips to China, uncountable numbers of transatlantics... it's been stuffed under airplane seats and crammed into luggage racks. I've probably hit a number of irritating junior consultants with it ;-) If you spec' them well at the start they last for donkey's. Yes I have another nice new shiny blade thing but these are business workhorses.Only thing I had to do last year was swap out the HDD for a SDD, should keep it going for a while longer.
"I still have my T430s that is 7+ years old. "
I'm running an X61 which I bought *used* in 2008. I have replaced the battery, upgraded the RAM, and switched to an SSD and it is still going strong. In fact, now that I think about it, it's had 3 different SSD's in it, each larger than the last (30 -> 128 -> 512 GB). Mine is the X61s with the tablet display and built-in pen storage. WIth the lockdown, it's not been getting a lot of love lately, however.
I've had one, the Lenovo T440. The buttonless clickpad was truly awful, the screen on mine was very poor quality, and despite being a fairly standard sized laptop it only came with 2 USB ports, With my dock plugged into one port, it meant I was constantly jostling the remaining slot for my external drive and headset.
The only redeeming feature of that machine was the keyboard. I still prefer Lenovo's classic keyboard, but their current ones are still some of the best keyboards currently available on laptops.
it seems lenovo have taken this route long time ago. As it did with others, equally unwelcome. Removable battery? sd-card slot? Oh come on, they're like so 2010 it's just embarrassing to even mention them. Never mind the weight either...
p.s. and yes, I would like to swap my ram, as proven in my current, probably 3rd hand x220, which takes going over quadruple hoops to install 16gb ram. Soldered? Forget it :(
The reviewed model is the *s model, T14s. It's slightly more ultra-booky/streamlined and hence more of a stock configuration. Go for the non-s T14/T15 model and you have mixed ram, some soldered, some user upgradable. I have 16GB base/soldered + 8GB; can upgrade to the 16GB + 16/32GB. The non-s models also have wired Ethernet and HDMI. Battery, and many other parts, are user-replaceable. No special screws required, and conveniently documented in the public Hardware Manual.
Soldered RAM is annoying - but the T14s is the lower profile laptop. On the T14,proper at order time, you can configure the memory - one slot is 16G soldered but the second can take up to 32G for a total of 48G.
No Ethernet is probably standard for the form factor - the T14 has Ethernet - but most people might well use a dock for additional connectivity.
Mouse buttons - if you use the mouse buttons consistently, you don't wear out the trackpad - likewise with the pointing device if that's what you like. For writing a university dissertation length paper - you'll probably use a decent external keyboard / mouse
Yes, it is for airflow, don't set your laptop on a squishy pillow or a fluffly blanket unless you want it to slow down due to thermal loading ... i.e. the CPU throttles its speed when it starts getting hot. Older Thinkpads (T420 era) avoided this design-issue by inhaling cool air from the back and exhaling hot air out the sides but those devices were much thicker than current models due to the inclusion of optical drives (CD/DVD). I suspect the current design was adopted to make the laptops thinner. A good practice is to avoid parking a running laptop anywhere dusty or where lint may get sucked up into the machine's cooling fins, seems like common sense but a lot of people don't think about it.
The first few laptops I used had a Pointing Stick or TrackPoint device, or whatever you want to call it. I guess I got used to it, like that crusty bastard in your office that insists on using a Trackball or has to have an ergonomic keyboard. I find it a lot more pleasant to use in most cases than a touch pad, but in practice I find myself switching between them depending on the task at hand.
I hate laptops that only have a touch pad, and despise it when they don't have physical buttons. The touch pads on Dell's Precision line especially irritate me as even slightly carelessly clicking the pad makes the cursor jump from where you want it. So I really just feel like the author doesn't know what he's missing, or just doesn't have enough practice with pointing sticks.
The answer's in the comments here. As long as there are people who hate trackpads, Lenovo might as well continue to fit a Computer Laptop Integrated Trackermouse and take the captive audience on offer.
I'll bet it costs pennies as it's designed into their keyboards too.
Exactly. They keep their formula because it works, probably takes minimal R&D, and there are a hardcore band of customers who will stick with it and partly because they don't like those new-fangled trackpads without buttons, for example.
I've never gotten the appeal myself, but they have been consistently decent in companies I've seen them deployed, which I guess is the point. I would never part with my own cash for one, though.
Also it does take micro SD cards.
The charge time is impressive. Think its a 40watt charger. I have actually slow charged it with a bog standard USBC brick for my blower, though paranoid about the battery this way, it works.
And it really is light. I went for it instead it the Carbon. I don't think I made the wrong choice!
Wireless radiation is not desirable in the environment for many reasons, not the least of which is it interferes with the electrical harmony of the human body and other life forms on this planet. I have enjoyed using ThinkPads over the years, but without an Ethernet port I would not want one.
Natural radiation from the Sun is not the wireless radiation I was referring to. The damage to life is being done by the manmade electromagnetic radiation such as pulsed microwaves. Why do you think every cellphone is provided with safety instructions to maintain a separation distance from your body? The public remains largely unaware of the dangers. You might wish to read the research findings of experts in this field, such as Dr. Martin Pall or Dr. Devra Davis, or venture to the Environmental Health Trust website at https://ehtrust.org. Then perhaps you too will be able to appreciate the benefits of using wired rather than wireless connections.
I've never had a phone or WiFi-enabled device with such instructions and, if that were true, you'd already be screwed because there are much stronger sources of non-ionizing radiation in the environment around you than your WiFi or phone.
The benefit of wired rather than wireless connections is that, if you need more bandwidth, you just run more wires and a physical access requirement for security is much more intuitive to humans.
ALL wireless devices sold to consumers are required by law to include the radiation safety warnings that you claim you never had. Ignorance may be bliss, but here is a link that might enlighten you:
https://ehtrust.org/key-issues/cell-phoneswireless/fine-print-warnings/
The benefits of wired versus wireless are more than just bandwidth or security. Much less energy required and faster speeds for a start.
Ahh. Those warnings. From how you were describing them, I thought you were talking about something serious.
Might I suggest a more balanced examination like this one?
Also, those sorts of warnings are overly paranoid because, in the U.S., where a lot of these companies do business, the default position of the courts is that you pay your own legal costs even if you didn't start the suit and you won. Again, you get more radiation from other sources than your phone... but your phone is the one you can see without specialized equipment and possibly decide to go to a lawyer about.
(And there's a big market in selling you "radiation blockers" that, if they actually did do as they claimed, rather than being snake oil, would ruin your phone's signal reception and if they had any chance of working, would reflect the radio waves directed through the back of the device and away from your body back toward you, doubling your exposure.)
It reminds me of how, every time they do a proper double-blind study of so-called electrosensitive people, the fake plastic WiFi antennas make them sick while the hidden antennas pumping out radio waves full power have no effect on them, confirming that, yet again, it's a psychosomatic effect.
...plus, you can't sue the sun for giving you melanoma the way you can the company that you voluntarily bought a phone from. (And it really is just your phone that would be a problem if anything thanks to the inverse square law.)
There's is a NIC on board just not the physical port on the T14s, on the T14 there's physical RJ45 port. There's a dongle called "ThinkPad Ethernet Extension Adaptor Gen 2" needed for the T14s. The T490s was the same. I've had the T4x0s models for some time but now the thickness between the s and non s is so minor I've gone away from the slim s series because it does have the ethernet port which as a network engineer is important and there's few less compromises.
"It’s part of the ThinkPad brand, certainly, but it’s not something you instinctively want to use. Especially considering the T14s AMD comes with a generously sized and responsive trackpad"
Trackpad aka "scrabble pad."
Disable the trackpad if you need to use a laptop while configuring hardware that is over 1,000 miles away and up a tower, in the jungle.
We _told_ our tech to disable his trackpad. He didn't. Dispatch, get flown, hack through jungle, climb tower, plug in, reconfigure. Thanks, Mr. Tech and your stupid scrabble pad.
Trackpads are a cost-containment method similar to the single touchscreen in a Tesla M3, sold to consumers as a feature when in reality they're a human factors disaster.
Why do almost all laptops have the keyboard pushed back against the screen? Does anybody use a desktop computer that way, pushing your keyboard back so that it touches the screen? Then some extra high wrist rest so your hands are forced to be higher than the keyboard?
I'll give the UMPCs some slack, as they have no room to reposition things: https://www.sony.jp/vaio/products/P11/index.html
But why does everyone else go with that same terrible design?
Back in the days when carpal tunnel syndrome seemed like a major health crisis, having your wrists higher than the keyboard was reckoned to be the safe way to type. You could get a squidgy wrist rest to put in front of your keyboard to raise your wrists to the correct angle.
Now everyone uses laptop keyboards, with this built-in wrist-rest design, and you hardly hear about carpal tunnel syndrome any more. Coincidence?
Now everyone uses laptop keyboards,
Do they? Plenty of people use normal PCs, at home and in offices.
you hardly hear about carpal tunnel syndrome any more. Coincidence?
Yes, a coincidence. Just another media panic-of-the-week. Just like you don't hear about cell phones causing cancer much anymore.
I had actual diagnosed carpal tunnel syndrome. I switched to Dvorak and that seemed to help. Maybe just because it slowed me down a lot. Although I eventually became reasonablyi fast, now at 80+ wpm when I never got beyond 60 as a Qwertist.
But the absolute best thing about Dvorak is when some berk tries to use your keyboard without your permission ...
Er, not everyone. Office-based (remember them?) we were all switched to laptops from desktops some years ago (lower leccy use innit, greener innit) but we almost all used desktop keyboards. Some of us had the sense to use the big wristrests with them, even when the rubbery coating got a little bit sticky (thanks Lenovo).
Wow very frustrating to wait 6+ months for the Ryzen 7 4000 series to show up in a Lenovo T-SERIES thinkpad, only to find out it does not have the numeric keypad -- a feature that our corporate users really need. I think all of the Intel T series Thinkpads have the number pad on the keyboard. All of the Intel verision Thinkpads have an Ethernet port. Ah don't worry for another $33 USD you can purchase an ethernet dongle? What is this 1996, wheres my PCMCIA dongle??
Something that is easily lost/broken etc.
So here's my theory: Intel paid Lenovo to hamstring the AMD version of the Thinkpads so that corporate couldn't actually purchase them.
This is very frustrating for me as Thinkpads are our corporate standard --and we're stuck with slower, older tech, that is more expensive.
THANKS LENOVO! I would really love the Register to ask Lenovo why the AMD Ryzen 7 4000 series do not have these "must have" features for business users.
The T14/T14s variants are 14" and don't have a numeric keypad. The 15" T15/T15s models do have numeric keypads. What frustrates me about the 15" models is that the trackpad is centred in the middle of the main keyboard. I end up pushing the keyboard to the right to centre the main keyboard in front of me. Ended up with nasty RSI in my right shoulder due to repeatedly reaching past the numeric pad to operate the mouse. Now mousing left-handed, because compact desk keyboard seem to now be a thing. Also very awkward to balance a 15" on the occasion you might have to rest it on you lap.
"I’ve always wondered whether the red nub remains for historical, rather than utilitarian reasons. It’s part of the ThinkPad brand, certainly, but it’s not something you instinctively want to use"
Maybe it's not something you instintively want to use but there are still normal people around you know. My at this point close to three-decade fare with ThinkPads will be over the exact moment they do away with the last bit of usability they have (which is the nipple and the physical mouse buttons). I already came pretty close when they jumped on this dreaded chiclet bandwagon.
Compare:
KU-1255 (wired keyboard with TrackPoint)
and
EBK-209A (Bluetooth KB with a not-Trackpoint)
The former is brilliant. However, I couldn't find a wireless version that wasn't silly money (>£100)
The latter is a PITA, the nub works like a very small trackpad - but waaay to sensitive. Accidentally touch it while typing, it moves. Lift your finger to press the left click button, it moves away from where you were going to click. As a compact Bluetooth keyboard, it could be worse - it has PgUp/Dwn and Home/End keys. However if you are buying it so you don't need a trackpad or mouse, it will frustrate you.
As a long time ThinkPad user I prefer the stick and the three buttons across the top of touchpad, that are there for the stick. That third button is very useful scroll function and I hate the imprecision of the touchpad. I also prefer the old school ThinkPads that had a second set of physical button below the pad for those rare occasions I used it. My current work unit is a T440S and I'm not thrilled about the "updated" buttons, but at least it has the stick. Higher end HPs and Toshibas used to have them but Lenovo seems to be the last holdout.
This model is actually certified by Lenovo to have Ubuntu 20.04 pre-installed, but if you are considering installing Linux "after the fact", then this Reddit thread should be your first port of call (yep, from over 200 days ago - is the UK the last country to get this model?!):
https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/ht6sey/in_depth_review_with_all_my_thoughts_t14s_amd/
TL:DR - make sure your kernel and firmware are as up to date as possible (which ironically may mean avoiding LTS releases that Lenovo have certified!) and you should be good to go.
which is the one that comes with an ethernet port. I took the one with the 6 core 12 thread 4650U.
The beauty of which it basically works just about perfectly out of the box with Opensuse tumbleweed (needs a really new kernel to run the AMDGPU open source driver.)
As for the nipple. I find that I tend to use a mixture of both the nipple and the trackpad on mine. Just depends on what I am doing at the time.
Fantastic machine with a really solid chassis, so one can hold it with one hand and there is no flex in it like many other models / brands.
If anyone is considering this machine, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Like many others, I cannot use the "trackpad" style pointing devices. A couple of minutes trying and my hand cramps up very painfully and becomes unusable. I call it "getting the claw".
The trackpoint / stick style pointer on thinkpads is there for a very good reason - it's ergonomically a far superior device.
That's why it's standard on more or less all proper business and productivity focused laptops. I've had IBM, Lenovo, Dell, HP business laptops issued by my employers over the years and without exception they all came with the stick style pointer, including my last three HP machines. It might be associated with thinkpads, but it's used anywhere productivity is a priority.
Apart from being biomechanically superior, it has the huge advantage that you don't need to move your hands from the keyboard to move the mouse pointer, so mousing doesn't interrupt your typing for more than a moment. I suspect this is the main reason why it's the better option for productivity.
I find the mouse buttons being above the trackpad makes click/drag much more tricky: typically a two-hand move.
When the buttons are below, then left-click drag is a thumb-click-hold, any other finger drag. easy.
The obvious downside of buttons-at-the-bottom is accidental button press, something I personally never seemed to do, though no doubt milage varies on that.
And after owning a Lenovo for 6 months or so, I still hate their Fn / Ctrl key layout. BIOS swap option shows that they know this. But don't make the keys the same size so you can swap them.