Same. I bought a full-sized keyboard with numpad, but I felt it put the mouse too far off to the right. I much prefer the mouse to rest couple of inches from the enter key.
I think my next one will have it on the left side.
Just an overview: http://xahlee.info/kbd/programable_keypads.html
I think the only disadvantage is it's a separate thing, so you have two things to push away from you if you don't want to use the keyboard.
Same here. I went with a smaller keyboard for ergonomics. Also, I never use F-keys and rarely use the arrow keys, and there are some "60%" layouts (The [Mass]Drop ALT) that still have the arrow keys. I don't care for the RGB and other blingy crap on these, since I really don't look at the keyboard much anyway.
The purpose of the gaps is orientation: you can feel that you are going to press F4, because there's a gap below and to the right of it.
Funnily most laptop keyboards get away with no spaces between any keys even when there might be space. Granted, there are more considerations there, but I think convention has a little to do with it too.
I don't want a numpad because getting my mouse closer to the center of my desk really helps with RSI for me. There weren't many options left at that point, especially since I wanted a UK layout and no unstandard key sizes (limits your options with keycaps).
But yeah, if I could get something that looked as nice and had F+arrow keys I'd probably go for it.
Fwiw I got used to the chords you need to access those pretty fast.