I hate controlling a 3-D game using my stupid island keys on my laptop. So many laptops today have island-style keys and the arrow keys are so close together, it's just nuts trying to use it.

What program are you using? I've used joytokey in the past and that worked with anything. That was with a Logitech F510/F710.

By "island keys" do you mean where the two rows of arrow keys are squished into a single key row under the right shift key?

This isn't related to your joystick/gamepad issue, but if the size of the arrow keys is the main problem, you can change the keybindings to use WASD. For most controls you can assign two keys, e. g. both up-arrow and W for walking forward.

The way I have my key bindings set up for Uru is WS for forward/backward, A/D for strafe (which is normally on comma and period) and Q/E for rotation. If you prefer you can use A/D for rotation to mimic the arrow keys, though I personally map them to strafing because that's how most games with WASD controls work.

If you use WASD for movement, you might also want to set T or Enter as the "start chat" key in the controls. By default you open chat by typing any letter, which won't work well if you bind many letter keys.

I tried that one 2nd. Did you try it with Myst Online though? And I don't meean Uru: Ages Beyond Myst.