I had an Evo and moved to the Epic, I also liked sense. The Evo was just not as fast and fluid as the Epic. I do not like slide out keyboards, so that is actually what turned me away from the Epic. But the smoothness of the epic, the screen, the cpu and gpu are more important to me than not having a physical keyboard.
After seeing how much I use swype now I would really like a way to lock the keyboard from sliding out, but no its not a BAD keyboard, I just hate physical keyboards, mainly because the moving parts make the device feel loose. Same thing with the Pre.