I was about to email Engadget with this as an `Ask Engadget` (I have anyway), and figured that this was probably a good place to re-post my gripe.
I've been looking for a new laptop for, well, ages and anything that's about the size that I want (13") seems to have a stupid keyboard unless I pay > £600. And even them most of them seem to suck.
The issue I'm talking about is exemplified by the image from one of their recent posts, where it's clear that more thought has gone into the look of the keyboard (though even there they failed) than the usability. The key issues (pun not intended) is that the keys are in the wrong places. As someone used to the good old style of laptop keyboards (that being basically a desktop keyboard slightly shrunk, no numpad, the arrows moved to beneath the return key, the inset/home/etc. 6 being arranged in a column next to the return key) I can't get used to this new craze to put the backslash above a flat return key. This seems the silliest place possible for it. Not only is it out of reach when you want it (as a massive command line user that's a lot of the time) but it's liable to get hit when you swipe for the enter key (probably the most used on the entire board).
Hence I'm wondering if there's a good reason that these keys are being moved around, and if there's any way we as a user community (please tell me I'm not the only one with this opinion!?) can let the manufacturers know that they're being silly?
In the mean-time if anyone can recommend a good, portable, (hopefully affordable) 13" laptop with a sane keyboard layout I'd much appreciate it. (I'm aware of the ViewSonic VNB131 and very tempted by it, though even that's not perfect)
