Killing caps lock makes perfect sense, especially if it's still around as a shift-lock. Putting Home and End there is not the craziest thing I've seen done with it. (I personally remap it to a larger logo key, and use that with my window manager, but the X1 Carbon actually has a decent-size logo key to use for that.)
However, the soft function key row is crazy. It completely breaks touch-typing; if I wanted that, I'd use a tablet. Likewise, putting Delete to the right of backspace makes backspace a smaller target to hit, and it's a very frequently used key. Moving the `~ key is the kind of thing done by folks who think "Oh, nobody ever uses that", and who don't understand that keys used by 5% of typists are still critically important. (Both for people who need to type "jalapeño" and people who need to type ~/Downloads/foo .)
More importantly, there's no tradeoff here: this makes it worse for the loyal ThinkPad users, but doesn't actually make it proportionally better for others. And even if it did, that kind of consumer-targeted optimization is for consumer laptops like IdeaPad, not business laptops like ThinkPad.
If you're comfortable remapping the keyboard, all of this is pretty much a non-issue.
What's more of a concern to me, as someone who was hoping to buy the Haswell X1 as a Linux box, is the function-key row. Lenovo generally has a reputation for laptops that support Linux reasonably well out of the box, but if that function-key row requires extra driver support (i.e., if the BIOS doesn't set it up to emulate a standard keyboard), things could get awkward...
That much should work; word of mouth from other Linux users suggests that there's a BIOS setting to force it to be F1-F12 by default, and to be brightness/volume/etc via Fn.
Why not replace caps lock with a double-tap of the Shift key? This has the advantages of distance (still close at hand when needed) and memorability (Shift upcases temporarily, Shift-Shift upcases indefinitely) and eliminates one of the less useful keys at the same time.
Also, I tend to fiddle with keys, tapping shift nervously. Having this result in capslock would drive me nuts. It would be a deal-breaker if this functionality were in the keyboard firmware and not configurable.
Does anyone know of any software that can do this (for OS X)? I think double-tap Shift to toggle Caps Lock would be pretty neat. Or even better, I'd like to program an action after double-Shift (or other modifier keys too, Control, Option, Command).
Edit: I got this to work using KeyRemap4MacBook, if anyone's interested, use this snippet in private.xml:
<item>
<name>Double-Shift to Caps Lock</name>
<appendix>Double-tap ⇧ to Caps Lock</appendix>
<identifier>double_tap_shift_to_caps_lock</identifier>
<autogen>
--DoublePressModifier--
KeyCode::SHIFT_L,
KeyCode::SHIFT_L,
KeyCode::CAPSLOCK
</autogen>
</item>
CapsLock has a perfect reuse as language switch for those who use a second language (which is most of the world). It is much easier than Alt+Shift/Cmd+Space, and it will indicate another input language with the LED even when tray/menu are not visible.
Meh. In Linux, at least, you can do this:
setxkbmap -option grp:switch,grp:shifts_toggle,grp_led:caps us,se
It will toggle between US and Swedish layout when both shift keys are pressed together (basically the only time I use rshift), as well as toggle the caps led on when the Swedish layout is activated. I have caps lock bound to ESC, for more convenient for vim usage.
However, the soft function key row is crazy. It completely breaks touch-typing; if I wanted that, I'd use a tablet. Likewise, putting Delete to the right of backspace makes backspace a smaller target to hit, and it's a very frequently used key. Moving the `~ key is the kind of thing done by folks who think "Oh, nobody ever uses that", and who don't understand that keys used by 5% of typists are still critically important. (Both for people who need to type "jalapeño" and people who need to type ~/Downloads/foo .)
More importantly, there's no tradeoff here: this makes it worse for the loyal ThinkPad users, but doesn't actually make it proportionally better for others. And even if it did, that kind of consumer-targeted optimization is for consumer laptops like IdeaPad, not business laptops like ThinkPad.