Lenovo slowly transitioned away from IBM's design over the years. They are now using cheaper plastics and have horrible chassis designs which dig into your wrists due to their non-rounded edges. They're trying to make Thinkpads look more slick while at the same time reducing the cost to manufacture them. IMHO the Thinkpad can no longer be considered a platform which you can safely buy knowing that every component will be fully supported in Linux. Some hardware components are not even working correctly in Windows or are faulty (I'm looking at you Fibocom WWAN modem; see: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and-newer-T-...). I would happily buy from any other brand if they have a laptop model with a good trackpoint.