Posts Tagged ‘ keyboard

Order your Optimus

The (long long) long-awaited Optimus keyboard is finally available to pre-order from Art Lebedev. Back to its original 113-key layout, it can be yours in December for $1564.37 (about £700, which works out at $13.84 per key). Only 200 will be made in the first batch, so act quick if you want one.

Also at the below links are some decent images of the finally-built keyboard. We can see it has USB output, two USB input ports as well as an SD card slot for saving the keyboard layouts. Also provided is a K-Lock for security – you wouldn’t want a $1500 keyboard to go walkabouts in the office, would you?

Link: Art Lebedev

The Optimus Maximus

The long-awaited king of keyboards – the Optimus 103-key – has had a name change: enter the Optimus Maximus. The Art Lebedev team were trying to get a working model shown off at CeBIT, but it seems they’re not quite ready yet – oh well, good things come to those that wait…

Along with the name change comes a price change – up from $1200 to $1500, and the Optimus Maximus will be available for preorder in April, with delivery at the end of this year.

For those uncultured amongst you, the Optimus Maximus is a PC keyboard that has a little screen in every key, displaying the function of that key at that time. Pressing Shift shows replaces the lowercase with capital letters (and symbols); and also the keys in different languages can be shown. Read more

Real Optimus Photo?

Could this be a real photo of the Optimus 103-key keyboard we’ve been waiting for? We know the device will debut at CeBIT, which starts on the 21st March, so we should expect them to have a working model. If it is real, then it certainly looks good.

QUOTE
Keys now are pretty big (about 2×2 cm), so we have to position them very close to each other. Since pressing four keys instead of one is not good, we’ve raised surface on every key to have usual 4 mm distance between keys’ tops. Surfaces have to be flat because no one wants optical distortions.

Also it has been revealed that a new name ‘it’s not 103 anymore’ is to be announced on the first day of CeBIT.

Source: Optimus Project Blog