I managed to hit power and enter in quick succession on the Mk III accidentally just a day or two ago so... yeah... I'd be in strong support of putting it somewhere less under my fingertips. Confused the heck out of me, I thought the battery had run out.
Yeah Macs deal with this by requiring a slightly longer press than you normally would with normal typing. Also for the caps and eject buttons. Smart idea that works well. I wish other manufacturers would follow their lead (like they do on the design front!)
I didnt have a PrtSC key on my Spectre HP machine, and so I remapped NumLock to PrtSc in order to use my screenshot program. Wonder if power can be reassigned.
It's only happened to me once, so I haven't bothered to change it but at least on Linux Mint it's just Settings -> Power Management -> When the power button is pressed -> Do nothing. Problem solved! Bit of a waste of a good button, though and it doesn't look trivial to rebind (IE: not supported by the builtin Shortcuts GUI even though pressing the power button obviously elicits a flicker of the input box).
Yes, at least on another laptop I used that had the power button in a similar place. The button was basically a button like no other for the OS and I was able to just unbind it. It didn't keep me from being able to use the button to power on or to hold the button for a long time to power off.
Putting the power button on the keyboard is a cost cutting measure. A lot of Chromebooks do it too. When you are building to a price you get things like this. I'm not surprised really.
I've never really considered these types of devices all that viable on merits. What about this is more compelling than a recertified ThinkPad? Because that's what $500 competes with.
I like how Chromebooks deal with the button. AFAIR when you press it screen contents fade into black and when the animation finishes (after something like 3 seconds) it will show you shutdown/reboot dialog. I never had any problem with the button. On Linuxen it is not as clear cut though.
How layouts like this reach the light of day totally escapes me.