looks like the 3000 has the same horrible reduced-size Escape and F-key row that I've had the misfortune of using on the Sculpt and others.

The older Curve 2000 series might be a better choice if you actually want to use those keys with any frequency

(And to bring it back to emacs, I find myself using ESC-ESC-ESC quite a lot when I (or it) get confused about what state things should be in)