I'm looking for advice on subdomains. Is it true that the search engines give the same weight to subdomains on a private (paid for) domain that they do to top level domain?

www is a subdomain

Yes for SE all of them are domain names.
Content is the most important for SE.

I have heard SE might give higher values for the domain names which contain keywords. I have seen a lot of people believe in it. What do you think it is truth?

sub-domain is equal to a new domain.. but there are more factors to determine ranking in search engine..

Originally Posted by WebhostGIANT-Rob

I have heard SE might give higher values for the domain names which contain keywords. I have seen a lot of people believe in it. What do you think it is truth?

Nope. ....

Originally Posted by WebhostGIANT-Rob

I have heard SE might give higher values for the domain names which contain keywords. I have seen a lot of people believe in it. What do you think it is truth?

Not. Unless you do the search for inurl:keyword.

se takes subdomain same weight as main domain, not much difference.

There really isn't much of a difference as far as weight goes. I use subdomains all the time with the same affect as my original domain.

Originally Posted by PhpScipts

There really isn't much of a difference as far as weight goes. I use subdomains all the time with the same affect as my original domain.

You are right, but sometimes that is really hard to make newbies understand that correctly.