The left side of the laptop gets noticeably hot if you don't vacuum the CPU cooling exhaust regularly. It would've not been a problem, but you end up resting left wrist on a very warm spot. Also the left pinky lingers exactly over the CPU and gets dry and itchy if you try and run a poorly written WebGL demo. The keyboard itself is fine, though I've been using laptops as a primary machine for 10+ years, so YMMV.
I was afraid I wouldn't like it, but after using it for a couple of weeks I am very pleased with it. I think the island style mainly was implemented to allow for the keyboard backlight. That's a bonus for me since I work in low light from time to time. Backlight really helps then.
Also, the six rows things is no issue for me. I rarely se the extra keys anyways. The PrtSc placement perplexes me though.
Thanks – yes, the PrtSc key is a little…odd. I was wondering about the PgUp/Dn buttons as well, as they are in this stupid location where they absolutely don’t belong. Why do you find the keyboard backlight helpful? So far, I found the ThinkLight to be more flexible.
Guess I’ll wait a little longer and see what the future brings, hopefully a 4:3 notebook with seven full rows and no touchpad </dreaming>.
I can't speak for the T430S but the T430 has 2 levels of backlighting and then if I click function space 1 more time the backlighting goes off and the little lamp at the top of the screen turns on.
Hrm, that's what I feared. I was a proud owner of a [0] before this one, but even the Core i520M slowly gets…slow, especially one of the newer graphics chips would be wonderful sometimes.