The problem that I have with most 17" laptops is the stupid number pad. It forces me to type with my hands off-center from the screen, and it drives me insane. The old 17" macbook pro was basically the only one to do it right.
Yeah, I'm not a numpad user myself, but I never really noticed the hands off-center issue, my brain seems to adapt without much distraction.
It's not my brain that's the problem. It's my shoulders. I tend to want to view the screen dead-on, so I'm typing with my hands shifted a few inches to the left. For a few minutes that's no big deal. Get into a 3-hour coding bender and my shoulders are killing me once I unfold.