Read Hyperion some years ago. I was totally trhrilled to read it because of the good reviews...
But I was very fast disappointed about the overwhelming focus on boring religion.
The interessting stuff like TechnoCore was so sparse that I never came into a flow reading the book. After 2/3 I just wanted to finish it fast.
That was probably a mistake. The religion is great (and I say that as a staunch materialist atheist) and _Fall of Hyperion_ had a lot more TechnoCore and filling out the background than _Hyperion_.
I had 3 different Thinkpads...
The first went down after 1 year with a headcrash. 1. HDD headcrash in my life.
The second one was delivered with bad RAM. Support denied help because of wrong FRU Number. The whole thing went back to the dealer.
The third one died in a loud bang of the power supply and died with it.
About design:
Placing the Ctrl key not on the outside drove me crazy.
The trackcap was horribly to use - an example of bad design par excellence.
The touchpad was bad in all 3 laptops.
> The second one was delivered with bad RAM. Support denied help because of wrong FRU Number. The whole thing went back to the dealer.
Did you get it sealed from the Lenovo factory, or could your dealer have replaced the factory RAM? (That could also explain "wrong FRU number".)
> The third one died in a loud bang of the power supply and died with it.
Bummer. Do you recall the model or design?
I once had a Lenovo AC adapter eventually go bad (out of buying and using dozens of them), and fortunately didn't take the laptop with it.
And I once ripped the laptop-side connector off an old one that I was abusing pretty hard, and then tripped over the cable (but laptop was fine).
Other than that, the rest of them have worked great, even some 20 year-old ones I still have and use.
> The trackcap was horribly to use - an example of bad design par excellence.
The TrackPoint? Could you say specific criticisms of the design?
I consider it mostly a personal preference thing. A lot of people love TrackPoint, and consider it a hard requirement for any laptop they'll personally use. A lot of other people prefer trackpads, and have more options for laptop brands.
(Disclosure: I know the inventor of TrackPoint, but that's not why I use it.)
This reminds me of the time I went to a church dinner with my father.
Everything was fine, but then each person was asked to stand and briefly mention something they were thankful for. About half way through one of the oldsters mentioned their health problems - "I'm thankful they aren't worse" - sigh. Every person after that had to list every health problem they had, and every health problem everyone in their family had. It took like an hour and we were waiting to eat.
I like it :-)