8760 & 8690: Good keyboards?

I am looking at possibly getting one of these two notebooks, but I have one big question...how good is the keyboard, especially for long periods of typing? I have an ASUS right now, and while I love everything else about it, the keyboard blows. It skips letters fairly often, and has a huge amount of keyboard flex. When I press down on a letter, I can really feel the keyboard sink. I wanted to hear from owners of these sager models if their keyboards do the same thing. Thanks in advance!

 

I've been playing with the 8690 for a few months now and as far as the keyboard goes its about as solid as it can get in my mind. The keys are well spaced out and there's little to no flexing. Some people may argue about the short key travel but I'm a SHORT-STROKER so it all works out for me.

 

Make sure you like chiclet keyboards.

 

The quality of the keyboard is top notch. But like Mandrake said, make sure you like the style, otherwise, the great quality will be moot if you loathe typing on it.

 

It's the best keyboard I've ever used on a laptop hands down. I can definitely type faster on this keyboard and for long periods of time than any other. You won't be disappointed with it for whatever use.

 

I think the keyboard is great but then I haven't done any long periods of typing, has everyone else used that keyboard for very long?

 

personally I think the keyboard is too squishy, needs lot more pressure. And the edges of the space bar sometimes do not register. Make sure you can hammer ;-)

 

Reviews I've read say there is no dedicated PgUp, PgDown, Home and End keys. You have to press the Function key first to enable those. Is what I've read correct? On a 17" laptop, seems like there should be enough space to have dedicated keys for those functions. Can they be changed/remapped somehow? Just seems silly to me.

 

My 8690 has a spacebar that needs a firmer push than any of the other buttons, but other than that the keyboard is great.
I've heard of one or two other people that have had spacebar issues though.

 

I have the 8690 and the numpad 3 and 9 work as down and up, not sure about when in a word doc though, i imagine you would need to use fn+arrows then

 

to have the dedicated home/end/pgup/pgdn keys you just hit Fn + NumLk and that will disable the keypad, allowing you to have those dedicated keys no matter where you use it. easy solution

 

Oh I see, it must be on by default or I accidently turned it on, so you do have to swap them back and forth from numpad to pg keys.

 

same here, the spacebar needs to be hammered. I wonder if the spacebar can be removed to take a peek what's going on.

 

i have no idea what the spacebar issue is about, i think its just a bad batch, cos there is absolutely no problem with the spacebar, if theres a click no matter where on the space bar it registers for me.