The new keyboard is cool. I prefer the new one over the old one - it feels more solid to me personally. The layout was a little bit unusual compared to the previous thinkpads, but I got used to it after one week. I'm a software developer and doing lots of typing, and the keyboard works.
As for the 'hollow speaker sound' - the speakers indeed sound tiny, but I could fix it to some extent by some digital sound processing magic. If you are not satisfied with the tiny hollow sound, please check the driver at my web site:
http://yohng.com/software/speakerfix.htmlThanks,
George.