Funny, I also have an old Dell laptop, and I LOVE the keyboard on that thing. It literally makes my fingers happy to use. It was a tough decision to finally a

Funny, I also have an old Dell laptop, and I LOVE the keyboard on that thing. It literally makes my fingers happy to use. It was a tough decision to finally adopt another solution (below), but I finally did it. I use a de-Chromed Chrome book (acer c720) with xubuntu for personal projects these days. I do java/j2ee on a macbook pro for work, I never use it as a laptop, it's always docked. For personal projects on the chrome book, I code apache/python/django/vim, which run wonderfully on it. The smaller screen does take some getting used to, and the nonstandard keyboard takes some remapping. Otherwise, after 9 months, no complaints.