The guy who designed this keyboard layout should be shot.

[BurnItDwn]

I'm in the Model M crowd. have one at work and 5 at home (2 hooked up to PCs, and 3 "backup" keyboards). Of course I've also pulled the keycaps off of one of them and left it blank, and I've changed a couple of them to Dvorak .... but I use the blank one the most. That way I don't have anything on the keys to distract me.

Anyhow, all keyboards should be mechanical, and none of them should have the keys labeled.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

For the most part it does feel really solid, but it's just that one key. To be fair I'm the kind of person that beats the space bar into submission with the side of my thumb-knuckle, so if you are a gentler soul it will probably be better. In fact, with however many odd spaces I've included in this post, it hasn't missed a stroke or double-stroked yet, so it's not even a regular thing. Microsoft makes solid budget peripherals in my experience (my $8 MS mouse is fine after several years, which my Logitech could not manage).

EDIT: re Locut0s.

 

[CZroe]

What really annoys me is needless condensing on notebooks. For example, short RSHIFT keys to make room for the arrow keys despite there being PLENTY of room to shift the keys down. It's like they want to avoid a non-rectangular keyboard AT ALL COSTS. Why?! USE THE FREAKING SPACE! I've seen some with a *slight* L-shape for the arrow keys but it was less than the thickness of one row because the arrow keys themselves were smaller than the other keys. I also want to start seeing more notebooks with touchpads that actually use all the space between the space bar and the front like MacBooks. Needlessly small touchpads on larger chassis is very annoying.

My laptop has that. At first I was like "WTF?" then I was like "Oh, the fn keys to turn the keyboard light on and off are at the corners of the keyboard and thus easy to find in the dark" so I was okay with it but then I thought "How often do I need to type in total darkness?" and I was back to "WTF?" but then I found a fix for it on an internet forum and thus discovered that I really didn't care all that much because I was too disinterested to even read the thread. True story.

I *HATE* not having CTRL on the lower-left when playing games. Heck, even the G-keys on my G15 screw me up all the time but at least it's backlit and they aren't in the corner of the main key area.