I was just in a Best Buy and was playing around w/ the floor models to kill some time while waiting for a friend and found that 90% of the keyboards on every laptop model sucked. Like really bad. They seemed to be all sourced from the same vendor (i.e. the same sucky keyboard) too. They had these weird extremely flimsy oddly (uncomfortably) textured chicklet keys. It didn't used to be like this a few years ago -- most of the keyboards I remember from when I was looking for a laptop back then were pretty solid or at least didn't have the weird flimsy textured keys, even if they were mushy.

The only exceptions on the floor today were 1) Sony Z series (obviously), 2) Toshiba netbook, and 3) MacBook * models. The rest of them all had the same crappily textured keys. (There weren't any Thinkpads there)

Post experiences with good/crappy laptop keyboards or other input devices (the touchpads ranged from really crappy to pretty decent)

Well, Best Buy isn't exactly the best sample of laptops, since you're going to get a lot of cheap crap and Macs, and that's about it. You're not going to see much in the realm of higher end Dells, HP's, etc. that are going to have better keyboards and touchpads usually.

I <3 the keyboard on my Toshiba Satellite, to the point where I prefer to use it over my desktop because the keyboard is so comfortable to type on, even though I have a very nice, and expensive Logitech Keyboard.

(only thing that bothers me, is for whatever reason, the spot directly where my left hand rests get's SUPERHOT whenever I'm playing games (usually WoW).. You would think they could have designed it better to move whatever it is that's causing all the heat (processor maybe) to a spot that's not right where the user's hand goes. But yeah, the keyboard's great on it.)

Darth pretty much has it. I've never seen an HP envy series in a bestbuy, they are all pavalians at half the price. You really get what you pay for, and the higher end laptops still have quality keyboards. This one I'm on for example is about as good as it's possible for a scissor-switch keyboard to be.

All of the computers you will buy at Best Buy locations and other retail outlets such as Walmart and Staples are made with inferior parts. It's how they save money. You should just go directly to the manufacturer rather than relying on any of these chain stores.

Have you seen these new Thinkcentre chiclet keyboards? They have a printscreen button next to the spacebar. Explain that one.