I have an E585, and I agree it's not quite as good. I think the E series are kind of the "budget ThinkPads" (I got it second-hand in a pinch after my previous laptop broke). It's decent enough I suppose, but I've had a number of curious hardware problems with it (including the drift you mentioned).
> I do appreciate the thinkpad's clustered f1-f12 keys, which make common f keys quicker and easier to find.
Finally I found someone who cares about this too! I've had laptops without those little gaps, and I found it unnoticeably harder to use the F keys; for example brightness up/down is F5/6, and when watching some TV at night when it's dark it's so much easier to find those keys with those little gaps. Even in regular normal use it just makes things a wee bit easier.
It's a small design detail, but it so clearly and objectively makes the keyboard better than I don't understand why so many keyboards don't include it. Well, I do understand: the graphical designers have locked all UX designers in a closet somewhere, but still...
> griping about the "swapped" ctrl/fn key positions
You can just change it in the BIOS anyway so that Fn is Ctrl and Ctrl is Fn, so it's a non-issue anyway.
> I do appreciate the thinkpad's clustered f1-f12 keys, which make common f keys quicker and easier to find.
Finally I found someone who cares about this too! I've had laptops without those little gaps, and I found it unnoticeably harder to use the F keys; for example brightness up/down is F5/6, and when watching some TV at night when it's dark it's so much easier to find those keys with those little gaps. Even in regular normal use it just makes things a wee bit easier.
It's a small design detail, but it so clearly and objectively makes the keyboard better than I don't understand why so many keyboards don't include it. Well, I do understand: the graphical designers have locked all UX designers in a closet somewhere, but still...
> griping about the "swapped" ctrl/fn key positions
You can just change it in the BIOS anyway so that Fn is Ctrl and Ctrl is Fn, so it's a non-issue anyway.