It has been fun to watch this fight over the D-pad... Personally I do not use it much, but it is very helful when need to edit few characters in the middle of long text field, say a file path.

Instead of D-pad I'd like to see a general purpose "Function keys" around the display, similar to what you see at ATM or gas pump. The keys can be freely programmable by the application. App can place a small icon next to the button to show the current function, and one function can be the "D-pad" in certain circumstances.

One of the best example which miss programmable hardware keys is media (MP3) player. If there was a reasonable amount of HW keys available you can use the tablet as MP3 player never watching it and/or taking it out of pocket! Very useful feature, in my opinion. To bring this feature further there should be separate lock mode for display and buttons: If you use the tablet as MP3 player you want to lock the screen from not reacting touches, but want to keep buttons operational to user input.