Really wish they would get rid of the numpad layout and center that touchpad or make it bigger. Really bothers me that the touchpad isn’t centered, makes it awkward.
I found it convenient to have the numpad available at all times and the muscle memory I developed while typing on it makes the process less frustrating than looking all the time at the number row on the main keyboard body. As I understand it, the laptops with no numpad have a toggle that turns keys on the right side into a numpad, don't remember how exactly, might be vendor specific, some even have numeric markings on those keys, but the keys are laid out slanted, not in a square grid like the real numpad, so it's less precise that knowing you can feel the bump on the no. 5 key and to get to the others you just have to move straight up/down/left/right.
The fact that the touchpad is not centered never bothered me at all; I use a macbook for work, which is centered, and I felt no difference in hand position or comfort. In fact, the inverted position of CTRL and FN were (and still are) way more frustrating to deal with, even the switch to ISO keyboard from ANSI was less frustrating that that, but the off center touchpad/keys, never.
But some people get very mad when a laptop is released that doesn’t have exactly what they need and don’t want to hear that there is a plugin that enables that use case. While others get very mad that there are extra things on their laptops.
Social media is fun.
7 8 9 0
U I O P
J K L :
M +
Head naturally centers on the screen, it helps if palms lay on center too.
[1] https://kbimg.dell.com/library/KB/DELL_ORGANIZATIONAL_GROUPS...
[0] Especially not given the current trend for laptops to become thinner and thinner.
What I'm really disappointed by is laptop manufactures pretty much only go two routes now on laptop keyboard layouts: 1. The one with numpad on wider laptops like this one, 2. The compact one with smaller arrow keys and no nav keys (Home/End/Pgup/Pgdown) in a reasonable place. (typically hidden behind Fn+arrows)
I used to have this old laptop, Dell Latitude E6410, that had pretty much the perfect laptop keyboard for me to write code with. It looks like this [1]. I use Home/End keys extensively while coding and it's part of muscle memory to reach for them directly vertically above arrow keys. This is the only laptop with a keyboard layout like this that I know of. (the full size arrow keys also help)
1: https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*pDN_eHnop3QdkRbjkxRSFQ.jp...
It would be great to have a standard chassis that could hold an upgradeable pi-like board and a custom keyboard.
They might have chosen that due to their intended audience. The numpad is pretty handy for many professional applications. Let's say you are using Blender - there are many keys bound to the numpad. You can work without those, but it's awkward. Not to mention applications requiring lots of numeric input.
You could plug in an external numpad(or better yet, a bluetooth one). But this is a laptop, it's one more thing to carry.
I personally don't require a numpad these days - I'm typing this on a mechanic keyboard without one. Have I missed it occasionally? Yes. Would I prefer a laptop without one? Yes. Give me more keyboard real state and a better layout.
Now, the off-center small touchpad is the biggest offender here, IMHO. This is a design reminiscent of early 2010 cheap 15.6" laptops. Maybe it's a good touchpad. But I am already prejudiced against it, because it looks like the old synaptics (or the even worse competitor I forgot the name). They don't provide any details in the specs, they just say "multitouch".
For the price, I think one could live with it. High end workstations from HP/Dell (their own design, their own suppliers) went for $5,000+ a decade ago. They stopped doing that recently.
Nowadays only Apple seems to have enough pull to get uncommon features on their machines.
(I follow this philosophy in my martial arts as well. Which turned out well enough when on my black belt test I accidentally did all my techniques lefty and still passed!)
* centered touchpad (edit: well, kinda)
* touchpad with physical buttons below _and above_, including a _middle button_
* trackpad, though I don't use it much
* no numpad so there's more room for the rest of the keyboard (it's a 14" laptop) and it feels great
* arrows slightly out of the keyboard layout, with adjacent page up/down
* keys feel great, but I guess that's common now
Some more notes:
* old-school docking system, which I prefer over usb C and such
* (this one's a con) weird home/end button position, but nothing serious