I feel it's worth mentioning that I'm one of these people actually. The numeric pad is handy to have on hand for games and especially games which lacked the foresight to include keyboard mapping for keys that not every keyboard has. For some reason 1 Numeric can register differently than 1 in the numbers row. The other thing is that the columns are perfectly aligned into rows for mapping left hand functions.
I suppose I could just buy an external but to be honest, I'm not sure if that'd work and really, really dislike the prospect of using external peripherals on the go unless there's simply no other way. It's just sloppy and it's not like there's not enough room enough on the top surface itself with a 17" keyboard. Granted, moving the homekeys off center isn't in the greatest ergonomic good but it's a necessary evil I'd be willing to put up with.
It's not just for the video game players either. I can see how some people, say like maybe certain scientists, accountants or engineers are just so handy with a calculator's numeric pad that any other solution for mathematical inputs is just simply insufficient for them. To put it bluntly, having a physical numeric pad makes the difference between being able touch type or being forced to peck away at keys on the keyboard with a single finger/cursor for lack of a better way of putting it.
As for the trackpad being off center, the aesthetic doesn't really appeal to me but it makes sense from a functionality in design standpoint. Even out of the people who could make use of a numeric pad, most of the time the user's hands are going to rest upon the home keys for more nominal typing purposes, so to center the trackpad away from them adds needless distance, taking more time for one of their digits to come from the keyboard to the trackpad for cursor manipulation purposes. This latency can needlessly bog down the works for the user while in multitasking, say if they're browsing the world wide web while chatting with somebody on IRC, which is not an all too uncommon scenario. This is especially helpful for the south paws who have a longer distance for their preferred hand to travel and would otherwise have to take both their hands off of the keyboard to mouse to avoid crossing their arms, however even the right-handed are marginally affected by this.
rice ratio. Now a lot of it is indeed subjective as you claim but we have to remember that Windows Home Edition simply doesn't have some features that better versions of Windows and OSX have. Say if for your applications security is of a high concern, an easy to use built-in encryption program may be of some value. Mac OSX comes with Filevault by default but you need the Ultimate edition of Windows 7 to get their equivalent, Bitlocker. Getting Ultimate through the BTO program adds $180 to the price already. I really think we should be using Ultimate as our base O.S. since it's the only "fully featured" Microsoft O.S. where as Mac O.S. is fully featured by default. Recovery media, which Apple includes with every mac, costs another $20 with Hewlett Packard and everybody really should have a set on hand incase something goes wrong.
