My work laptop is a HP elitebook 8560w which I mainly use for programming. Usually I have a external keyboard but recently I have been working out of office and therefore have been using the laptops own keyboard.
One thing has really started to bug me. The keyboard layout of this 15.6" laptop contains numpad but the arrow keys are really bad (too small). Also when programming, I really miss a standard inverted T-arrow keys and the home/end/PgUp/PgDn buttons. Then it occurred to me; I would rather give up a numpad than a standard arrow keys. (The keyboard real estate in 15.6" laptop would allow this, and I really have to agree with Jeff Atwood here http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/02/have-keyboard-will-program.html)
Which brings me to my question. Do any laptop manufacturers make custom keyboards for their laptops or is there some third party manufacturer who could supply these kind of special keyboards? Quick googling on this doesn't give any meaningful results. Looks like that I have to carry an external keyboard with me if someone here can't give any pointers.
Edit:
Seems I was a bit ambiguous. What I was looking for was a keyboard like this in the laptop when the current one contains numpad. But like I suspected not such parts seem to exist. (Of course with Finnish/Swedish layout, but layout of the "main keyboard" is irrelevant here.)
Best Answer
I'm not aware of anything like that. Laptop keyboards are highly proprietary parts, designed for each particular model, sometimes with additional features like backlighting, tracpoint, liquid drain channels, custom Fn-hotkeys, etc. It doesn't make financial sense for laptop makers to offer multiple keyboard layout options, and it just isn't feasible for any third-party manufacturer to offer custom keyboards for all existing laptop models. I'm afraid you're stuck with what you have.
If you want a 15" laptop with standard arrow and navigation keys and no numpad, check out the ThinkPad W5x0 series (W520 and W530 are the latest models).