Interesting, this is close to the amount of time where I decided to throw in the towel. Do you agree that this seems like a particularly long period of adjustment? I have been through many new laptop purchases at this point in my life and I can't ever remember the a period of adjustment longer than say a week or two tops.

Yes I agree. After a month or so, I wasn't expecting things to change.

Of course, this begs the question - is it actually better or is it just that I'm accustomed to it now? All I can say is that going back to the old keyboard feels very wrong.

I'd still prefer to have a real escape key but I've remapped it to CAPS LOCK and it's good enough.