I use a Chinese Rs.250/=  (approx $5.00) Zen keyboard. Have some recognized makes lying around eating dust... the keys on this one are just too comfy and I haven't had any problems in the 2+ years I've been using it. I even love the Zen mice, I find them way more comfortable than a MS or Logitech mouse.

Qliner Hotkeys is a really sexy looking app but that's where its wow-factor ends. It's weak and inept when compared to AutoHotkey and to add insult to injury, it consumes far more resources. I still have it installed though, it lets me create a nice graphical representation of my shortcuts, I save a jpg screencap of the Qliner keyboard and configure an (Auto)hotkey to load it whenever I need to be reminded of a shortcut. Using the best of both worlds. ;)
   

Google Reader is an excellent alternative - I have my feeds mirrored there just in case I need to check them when I'm on another PC. However, for someone who has a slow connection (256 kbps) I find an offline app like FeedDemon way more responsive that Google Reader.

The high CPU/memory consumption bug I was facing in FeedDemon is an acknowledged one and can be avoided by disabling HTTP 1.1 in IE (I don't know the technical implications but doing this doesn't seem to have had any noticable effect on my browsing.)

I still maintain that GreatNews is an excellent alternative, it's free, seems to be very efficiently coded and all the controls (collapsible trees, etc) respond quicker than their counterparts in FeedDemon. The only reason I'm still sticking with FeedDemon is their "Expando" view (a feature, sadly lacking in GreatNews) which makes reading much more user friendly. I'm dumping FeedDemon the day GreatNews incorporates this feature but for now it's very much the #1 app.