Optimus Keyboard Finally Here?

[eth3rton]

Found this interesting little article (http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/01/10/optimus_annoucement_feb1/) over at TG Daily (http://www.tgdaily.com/index.html):

Westlake Village (CA) - The much anticipated Optimus LED keyboard may be available next month, if we are to believe the Art Lebedev Studio's website (http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/). Keys will have an LED array that can be customized to display icons like the Internet Explorer "e" or Quicktime's signature icon.

Speculation about a possible availability of the device has been building over the past several months, but a recent, somewhat cryptic "Good Things Come in Small Packages - February 1, 2005" announcement has popped up on the company website.
This LED keyboard looks pretty cool but is it worth the $300 price tag? [It also] appears to be completely customizable for any application or user... :cool:

[LilAbner]

HOLY SHIT THAT'S COOL!!!

It's $300.

Pass.

[jeffool]

The Optimus is rather cool. Though I must admit I also want Das Keyboard (http://www.daskeyboard.com/)

[sickfallout]

Not only am I willing to spend close to $300 for that, I also just bought a new keyboard, a Logitech G15.

I'm such a gadget whore.

[Donut11]

My old, worn out wrists catch fire if I use a straight keyboard. Damn!

Imagine writing the code that streams RSS pr0n from Flickr to your keyboard. I wouldn't have to buy drinks for a month.

[eth3rton]

The Optimus is rather cool. Though I must admit I also want Das Keyboard (http://www.daskeyboard.com/)

That is nice. But I believe I could acheive the same results with a Black Keyboard and a bottle of my wifes Finger Nail Polish Remover.... ;)

[Hignaki]

ONLY $300?! Wow, I was expecting it to be a lot more. With OLEDs still being quite expensive, the $1k pricetags that were quoted earlier looked more feasable.


Optimus keyboard: come to daddy. He misses you.

[jeffool]

That is nice. But I believe I could acheive the same results with a Black Keyboard and a bottle of my wifes Finger Nail Polish Remover.... ;)heh, true. Though much of the appeal is nerd factor, the solid shape and weighting of keys (http://www.daskeyboard.com/images/keygrams.jpg) make it slightly substantial. Like Donut11 said, using the Optimus may be kinda painful for long periods of time when doing things like writing or programming.

Though, if I did have the spare cash to spring for an Optimus, I would definitely get it! And the first thing I'd do is make a game for it. Can't decide if it would be Tetris-esque or a simple Final Fantasy IV game with an odd world view. :D

[Draft]

That thing is so badass.

[Kefkataran]

God that looks so cool. I'd definitely pick one up if I had the money. Just the idea of being able to change my keyboard to match up with whatever game I'm playing is awesome.

[The Iron Weasel]

I saw Optimus and automatically thought Optimus Prime. I was hoping for an Optimus Prime keyboard but this is cool too.

[Echani]

I haven't really been following the development of the Optimus - I think I saw some pics last year and it looked interesting, but I for some reason slated it as a personal project rather than a commercial one. That's not to say that I'm going to get one, bought myself a Logitech G15 last month and that's more than gadgety enough for my ever-decreasing gaming needs, I'm just waiting for some way to use the LCD screen on that for photoshopping somehow.

Das Keyboard looks interesting enough, but I can tell I'd run into some serious problems looking for ampersands and tildes, or when I hop between my laptop and desktop keyboard. For a bit anyway.

[Quaestor]

This thing will be especially good for RTS/sim games with loads of hotkeys.

[Evil Avatar]

I saw Optimus and automatically thought Optimus Prime. I was hoping for an Optimus Prime keyboard but this is cool too.

I guess with the ability to customize your keyboard, you could still have Optimus Prime as a keyset. :)

[The Iron Weasel]

I guess with the ability to customize your keyboard, you could still have Optimus Prime as a keyset. :)
Very true! I MUST HAVE ONE!

[Rirath]

Old news to slashdot/digg readers, been waiting for this for a long time. $300 is a guess, it may well be less. Plus it's OLED, not LED. Also important to note it should have an open SDK, and it'll support key animations.

If it's under $200, I'll almost certainly get it.
If it's $250-$300, I'll have to think about it.

[Kalash]

I'm just waiting for some way to use the LCD screen on that for photoshopping somehow.



That's really what I'm looking forward to, I think I saw a pic, it's probably on the site, that had some of the keys mapped as the tools pallete for photoshop. it would be really sweet if it knew what program you were using, and mapped the keys for you accordingly what with symbols and all.

I may have to see if I can talk my boss into it. I mean, my productivity would surely increase, right, right?

[Demo_Boy]

OK noone has yet mentioned the coolest aspect of this board.

Imagine the screensavers this thing will run.

If you leave your board for 5 minutes it starts doing some badass Geiss color wipes.

DUDE THAT IS SO COOL. ULTRADROOL.

I want two so I can have one run the screen saver while I do text entry on the other.

[TrackZero]

This LED keyboard looks pretty cool but is it worth the $300 price tag? [It also] appears to be completely customizable for any application or user... :cool:

For me, possibly. It's one sexy, sexy keyboard. I'll wait to see how it's reviewed though.

[Derwin]

as an artist, anything that has a screen on it makes me wonder how long it would take to hack it to display my own images.

i must have this keyboard just so i could make strange segmented images and animations.

[A Lusty Alien]

I'm thinking about my time working at Honeywell in the commercial aerospace division. The engineers in any of the simulator group there would give up their firstborn for a keyboard that they could customize the keys on the fly. Now multiply that by every company that develops custom applications.

Hah!!!

Lotsa luck trying to get a hold of one of these puppies! I predict that these are going to be harder to get than an Xbox 360.

[Rirath]

That's just it though Derwin, you don't have to hack it. Open SDK. Should even support "keysavers", mosaics, lots of neat stuff has been proposed. Check the wikipedia entry for good info. There may be an ergonomic version some day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_keyboard

[Lon Lon Rabbit]

Wow this thread arrives on the day that my (month late) Logitech G15 arrives, interesting that several others here also have just bought one.

EDIT: About daskeyboard, I have like 5 of those in the back garage! The secretaries at work wore away all the engravings from dictation.

[Royal Fool]

I'm sure someone could create wallpapers (or "keypapers" perhaps?) that would spread over all the keys and show a coherent image... although calculating the logistics and layout of each key in the overall final image would be a nightmare.

[jeffool]

I'm sure someone could create wallpapers (or "keypapers" perhaps?) that would spread over all the keys and show a coherent image... although calculating the logistics and layout of each key in the overall final image would be a nightmare.Nah, not really. It's just a bit of mathmatics. Take the measurement from the left-most, right-most, top-most, and bottom-most pixels, and find out how large that area is in pixels. (Including empty spaces between keyscreens.) This tells us how big the image needs to be to properly fit on the keyboard. Eyeballing it, I'd say it's something like 960x224. It should be cake to write a program that would take any image, resize it to those proportions, and grab the appropriate bits for the keys.

[bapenguin]

oh hell yeah. Penguin must have one.

[Bubby]

OK noone has yet mentioned the coolest aspect of this board.

Imagine the screensavers this thing will run.

If you leave your board for 5 minutes it starts doing some badass Geiss color wipes.

DUDE THAT IS SO COOL. ULTRADROOL.

I want two so I can have one run the screen saver while I do text entry on the other.


It's a keyboard FFS.

[edit] BTW, does Demo_Boy's post make a lick of sense to anyone?

[KarmaGhost]

Old news to slashdot/digg readers, been waiting for this for a long time.This is actually new news because of the CES convention; the price was confirmed, as well as the release date. Back when this was initially posted on EvAv, neither of these was confirmed, just like on Slashdot.

[AniAko]

oh hell yeah. Penguin must have one.

Seriously. if you pickup a top-notch logitech gaming keyboard, it'll run you about $100. $200 for the optimus? HELL'S yeah. That is if it costs $300. The article talks about it being cheaper than a "good mobile phone". My other concern is Durability. I go through keyboards roughly every 1-2 years. If this keyboard can outlast the 3 year mark for me, it would be cost effective.

[drakkarim]

that G15 is a joke, a GAMING keyboard? for the love of god, if you're staring at a keyboard while you're gaming you A) suck at keyboarding/typing (take the high school class again) B) are an easy sucker to milk C) are NOT increasing your FPS D) are not 'cool'.

but hey, if you've got nothing smarter to blow $80 on...

this OLED keyboard however is all that and a bag of chips, would put that company that makes that special paper overlay keyboard for games right out of business.

being able to load a 'template' for a game that blacks out unused keys and puts different icons for specific/used keys would be a good step forward, and having all that be customizeable 100% would guarantee a winner (in sales).

[Nite_Moogle]

The G15 is really nice. Very solid and quiet. However you're overlooking the fact that you can come up with custom profiles for different games without having to remap all the keys. It's really something that hasn't been exploited in the least by anyone, judging it by its backlight alone isn't taking in the whole picture.

[AniAko]

that G15 is a joke, a GAMING keyboard? for the love of god, if you're staring at a keyboard while you're gaming you A) suck at keyboarding/typing (take the high school class again) B) are an easy sucker to milk C) are NOT increasing your FPS D) are not 'cool'.

but hey, if you've got nothing smarter to blow $80 on...


Oh don't think I was justifying purcahsing "Gaming keyboards". ;) I was just referring to the price gap. I'm perfectly happy with my $30 keyboard. But since it was brought up.... anyone actually sink some money into one of those ZBoards? :eek:

[Librum]

Nah - I never even look at my keyboard except to marvel at all the letters worn off the keys after a few months. But still, all the applications people have mentioned that make use of customizable keys on the fly would greatly benefit from something like this. And there is something to be said for the style factor, anyway.

[ÜberJumper]

My co-worker and I are gamers, both of us are touch typists. He picked up the G15 the other day, and it's badass.

The plug in modules for the GamePanel LCD are brilliant, the default ones hook into your system processes, showing CPU and memory load etc. You can toggle through the various GamePanel modules while in game. First day he had it, my co-worker snagged the Teamspeak GamePanel plug in module, now, while he's in game, he can see who's joined, left and is talking on Teamspeak. Right now, anyone joins or leaves our teamspeak server, and everyone's like "Who's there?" or "Who Left? Did someone crash?" The Gamepanel LCD thing would be awesome for Logitech to sell standalone. (As an aside, I recall Microsoft talking about ancillary or tertiary displays like the GamePanel a while back, but can't google up a reference to it, anyone know more about them?)

18 Programmable Macro Keys built into the keyboard with 3 modes per key add up to 54 macros per game. I think of all the repetitive shit I type in BF2 alone, or even macros / aliases for IRC and I want one.

Only thing stopping me is that I want an Ergo version of the board :-( Dream Keyboard? An Ergo version of something like the Optimus with the GamePanel LCD.

[SteveRage]

I'd sell a kidney for that thing, $300 saves me some surgery. MINE!! GIMME!!!

[TheKeck]

I saw Optimus and automatically thought Optimus Prime. I was hoping for an Optimus Prime keyboard but this is cool too.

Same here. When I saw that it WASN'T, I moved on.

THEN, I came back to see if anybody had made the obvious Transformers joke. Alas, I was too late. :(

[Gel214th]

It needs to have extra MACRO keys on the side of it to be really useful.

I don't want to have to remap keyboard keys that I need to use for Chatting in World of Warcraft for example, to perform some WoW Macro task.

[mrbandersnatch]

$300? I'll take 10! One of my projects is multilingual kiosk systems and if the keyboard can automatically adjust to the IME locale being used these are going to be HUGE! I suspect this model wont be rugged enough for the kiosk environment but will be adapted soon enough.

In the meantime I'll have 1 for myself so that I can switch between English and Japanese. SERIOUSLY cool gadget!!

[miah]

The Optimus is rather cool. Though I must admit I also want Das Keyboard (http://www.daskeyboard.com/)

You realize that the "Das Keyboard" is just a Keytronic keyboard ($25) with no letters on the keys and huge markup ($80) right?

My friend has a "Das Keyboard" and I have a Keytronic, its exactly the same keyboard..

-miah

[AniAko]

You realize that the "Das Keyboard" is just a Keytronic keyboard ($25) with no letters on the keys and huge markup ($80) right?

My friend has a "Das Keyboard" and I have a Keytronic, its exactly the same keyboard..

-miah

I thought the claim was also the fact that the keys on "Das Keyboard" were weighted to respond better based on the finger you're supposed to use to type on it with? Aethitics may be alike, but I thought this was more like a "precision typing" keyboard?

[Rirath]

This is actually new news because of the CES convention; the price was confirmed, as well as the release date. Back when this was initially posted on EvAv, neither of these was confirmed, just like on Slashdot.

Nowhere in the article do I see CES mentioned, the price confirmed, nor the release date confirmed. All the article mentions is the cryptic "good things come in small packages, Feb 1" message that was on Digg days ago. The only thing the article mentions about a price is a guess.

If any of that has been confirmed, it's not mentioned here.