Thinkpad Flaw: Thinklight/keyboard backlight does not remain on

I am classifying this as an actual flaw, because it has been a long-term annoyance and clearly does not make sense from an ergonomic viewpoint:

Many Thinkpad laptops have what is called a Thinklight which is a small but relatively bright light at the top of the bezel of the display which, when on, shines light down towards the keyboard. It is excellent for low-light situations when you need to see the keys (and don’t have a backlit keyboard). Even with a backlit keyboard I still would want this feature, although on the laptops I’ve seen there’s either a Thinklight or a backlit keyboard but not both.

So the issue with the backlit keyboard, which is exactly the same a with the Thinklight, is: When the screen goes blank due to powersave, then the Thinklight or the keyboard backlight turn off. You therefore have to turn them on again.

This is annoying. Think about it: You’re working on your machine and want to see. You enable either the Thinklight or the keyboard backlight because you want it on.

But then, if you happen to temporarily do something else and the screen blanks due to power saving, the light turns off. You do not want it off. You want it on. You do not want to have to keep turning it on over and over again every time the screen blanks due to power saving.

The bottom line is that the Thinklight or keyboard backlight should stay on until it is explicitly turned off by the user. Or else there should be a configuration option which enables the user to set it to either automatically turn off when the screen blanks (default behavior), or else remain on permanently until the user turns it off.

Here is a thread about this at forums.lenovo.com: W540 Backlit keyboard always on. Note that the issue there is marked as “solved” but it is only “solved” in the sense that it was concluded that there is no solution, which doesn’t mean it is solved.