> "it's a Thinkpad, but it has a shitty keyboard and a ...
The "Thinkpad Edge" and the X120e and X1 actually have very nice keyboards, arguably nicer than the usual scissor switches. Except that the layout is messed up.
I really love my MacBook Pro's keyboard. It's clean, with just as much keys as I need. I hate laptops with 110 keys, most are useless keys like page up/down, home/end, print screen, ... If I need to navigate to next page (which I often do), I just hold down 'fn' and press the down arrow. End? 'cmd+right arrow'. Admittedly, Print screen is a little harder to remember for the average user ('cmd+shift+3/4'), but MacBook's page up/down and home/end are very reasonable and easy to remember even for non-technical users.
I agree that the 'return' on the British keyboard is very poorly designed (there's an screenshot the original review at ars, but apart from that, MacBook's keyboard is one of the reasons I would never buy a PC in the foreseeable future (other reasons: OS X and trackpad).
Thinkpad's keyboard is much better than that the average PC laptop keyboard, except for page up/down keys getting in the way all the time.
Oh and I absolutely hate the media keys on laptops...
> If I need to navigate to next page (which I often do), I just hold down 'fn' and press the down arrow. End? 'cmd+right arrow'.
So you have to use two hands instead of one, which is great, because two is better than one. Do you disable right clicking on the trackpad and use command+click for that, too?
> Thinkpad's keyboard is much better than that the average PC laptop keyboard, except for page up/down keys getting in the way all the time.
Yes, I often have that problem, where I'm in the middle of typing something, and suddenly I think, there's a Page Up key on this keyboard. Just knowing that the Page Up key is sitting there, all on its lonesome in the top right corner, waiting, such a naughty little key that wants to snuggle in the brief touch of scar tissue at the end of my pinky, distracted me for 15 minutes when typing this reply.
> Oh and I absolutely hate the media keys on laptops...
This is where you reveal yourself to be a crazy person.
I have that problem with Page Up also. I want to scroll up in my terminal and I think "ah, this is a laptop, fuck it". Then I realize that I have a Page Up key, and am able to scroll up. It Just Works!
You'd think I'd learn someday, but I never do.
(BTW, if you want "crazy person", I own two keyboards that don't even have arrow keys. I don't think I've ever had a use for them!)
The "Thinkpad Edge" and the X120e and X1 actually have very nice keyboards, arguably nicer than the usual scissor switches. Except that the layout is messed up.