There are home and end keys on a full-size Mac keyboard, too. They're not there on the compact keyboard layout, but many Windows laptops have home/end mapped to other keys, as well. Granted, that's usually is indicated on the keys, whereas it's not on the Mac, but you still have to go hunting for them the first time you need them and one time is all it takes to learn their location.
...those home and end keys unfortunately don't take you to the beginning or end of a line like on Windows or Linux...they take you to the top/bottom of the document! one of the more painful parts of my switching process was un-training myself to hit home to get to the beginning of a line (these is no way to remap system wide either, you need to do it on a per app basis)...you're almost better off without having those keys.
> these is no way to remap system wide either, you need to do it on a per app basis
That isn't true. OS X actually has a very powerful and easy-to-use (but NOT easy-to-discover) method of controlling key bindings, and it applies instantly to ALL Cocoa applications (which, now that Finder and iTunes are Cocoa, means every common GUI application except Firefox).
This isn't my link, but here is an excellent site that describes the Cocoa text system:
And, if you're interested, here is the DefaultKeyBindings file that i've use on every OS X-based Mac i've ever had to fix Apple's default Home/End/PgUp/PgDn implementation:
