



Death. Taxes. Awesome ThinkPad keyboards. Just as RIM never made a BlackBerry keyboard I didn't like, Lenovo has a history of making excellent laptop keyboards, and the X1 Carbon doesn't disappoint. It uses the same "smile" design as the U310, which spaces out the keys slightly more without placing them any further apart so that they're easier to feel and press. Backlights make the keys easier to see in the dark, and the light can be toggled using the Fn key and the space bar. The keys themselves look a little odd, and I don't love the font for the letters, but neither changes the fact that the X1's keyboard has the perfect amount of travel, the keys feel great, and I can't think of another laptop I've gotten used to typing on so quickly.

Well, save for one thing — I never got used to the fact that the Control and Fn buttons are switched, so that the Fn button is the leftmost key and the Control key is one to the right (it's the same as a MacBook Air, but Control is a much less important key on a Mac). It's different from the U310, and I much prefer it the other way — my pinky always wants to hit the outermost key. The function buttons on the X1 Carbon are also secondary to the F1 or F2 keys, so you have to hit two buttons to change brightness or playback; the U310 does this the other way as well, and I wish the company had left it the same. You can change a lot of this in the BIOS, but it's a bit of work.

Lenovo's keyboard prowess is well-documented, but the company is also starting to figure out how to make a trackpad, which is astonishingly rare among PC manufacturers. The X1 Carbon's glass touchpad is large and smooth, responsive and fast without any of the nasty textures or oddities of most. It's a clickpad, and as a Mac user I appreciated the two-finger right-click capabilities too. Gestures worked well, though there's the tiniest bit of lag on zooming in and out; I suspect that's much more a driver problem than a trackpad problem, though. My biggest problem with nearly every Windows PC I've tested has been the trackpad, and having one that I didn't have to think about made the X1 Carbon all the more appealing. Of course, if you're not into the trackpad at all, Lenovo's telltale TrackPoint nub is present as well — I've never gotten used to it, but I know a lot of people who swear by it.