Keyboard cursor speed

[awreese]

One feature of OS X that causes me pain is the keyboard. Aside from it's compactness (My old hands seem much too big for this keyboard), I miss the ability to have full control over the keyboard cursor. I cannot hold down the spacebar nor the arrow keys and have the cursor race across the text or speed up and down the page. Holding the options key and arrow keys moves a word at a time but that's not quite the same thing.
Have I missed something here? Does anyone know how to restore this feature or know of any software utility that will make this possible?
Everything else is near perfect.
Hap