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The Optimus Mini Keyboard
Zugok writes "We all remember the Optimus Keyboard from last year. Now Art Lebedev and his team have designed the Optimus Mini Three keyboard. The 'Mini Three' builds on the idea of those extraneous keys on modern Logitech and Microsoft Keyboards but like the Optimus Keyboard utilises OLED technology for visual customisation of keys.
This is not vapourware, pre-orders are being take now with a cut price until April 2nd. This is just a step closer to the Optimus Keyboard. They also have a mailing list for those who want to keep up with developments of the Optimus Keyboard. Happy salivating!" This is a far cry from the full keyboard, but it's still pretty nifty. Assuming it actually does ship.
The pre order section says the cut rate pre order price is $100 (for the Mini).
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Heres a review (with pics) from engadget
liqbase
From the Art.Lebedev website:
It should also be noted that Art.Lebedev is a well known art studio, and that it works and has worked with many world-class industries and corporations. Definitely not the kind of guys who'd bet the (well established) respectability of their name and studio with vaporware they didn't need in the first place
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
For those complaining about the site being down without a mirror of a picture.... a little googling does help
Where did you get $300 from? If the mini keyboard has 3 keys and costs $100, and if the full keyboard keeps to the original design it will have 123 keys. 123/3=41, 41*100=$4100.
Obviously it isn't costing them the $33/key that they're charging, but it was never going to be cheap. They've always said it would be the same price as a decent mobile phone, and if that's a few hundred dollars, I'm sure they'll find a market. I'd be quite tempted, although not if the screens only last the 5000 hours I saw mentioned - even with my computer off half the time each day that would only last a year.
Think I'll stick with my £3 dabs.com keyboard for now.
They don't get your money until the thing ships. What pre-orders CAN do, is give them a somewhat accurate guage of demand, which can help them negotiate volume discounts with the component suppliers, and help them secure loans. But they don't get money from the pre-orders, they can't charge your credit card until the product ships, it's illegal.
What kind of 'they can't charge your card until product ships' crap are you spewing. Video games stores take pre-orders every day. Sears and Tweeter charge you TODAY for the TV that's shipping next week. There's no law that says receipt of good or shipment of goods must take place before charging can.
Now, if they fail to deliver the product EVER, that's a crime.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
From the FAQ, the expected lifetime of these displays is 5000 hours. That's a little over 200 days. Even with a "key saver", this severly impacts the usable lifetime of this device. I'm as excited about this keyboard as anybody else, but I think I may have to wait until people have had one on their desk for a year to see if I'm going to plunk down a significant amount of coin to buy one.
This whole discussion of cost came up on one tech forum when they last released plans to sell the full keyboard.
They said then the famous "as much as a good cell phone", which could be what? Some people are happy with the $50 phones, but the latest PDA-style computer with mobile service? That could be near $1000.
So how about this:
A few of us looked around, and the cheapest backlit OLED displays we could find for sale were displays for cell-phones, and each display cost roughly $75 (for the cheaper ones, in bulk). Those displays were big enough for about six keys. Bulk isn't OEM pricing of course, but that would figure to around $12 per key (for a 32 x 32-pixel display only).
Now even if you are willing to cut that cost estimate in half, that still means that these displays would cost roughly $5 per key. For around a hundred keys, that's $500 alone. OLEDs certainly will get cheaper over time and this may take them a year to get together, but they won't get that much cheaper. By far the main products they are used for is mobile phone displays.
Plus there's a good-sized piece of work underneath to run the pretty pictures. I'd be very surprised if they could get this thing out for less than $500-$600. There are other companies that produce customised-key boards of the normal type (just with different physical key shapes and positions) and they get $200-$300 for those.
~
Then, you pack up and make the order ready for shipment. When you have the stuff assembled in a box and ready to ship to the customer, you "capture" the payment. This is when you actually get the money, and things can fail at this point too (e.g, if the card had been stolen.)
Capturing the money before you're shipping the order is definately against the agreements used - I'm not sure if it is illegal or not.
There's also some maximum amount of time you can keep the funds reserved - I think this vary by agreement, too.
So, you don't get the money until you're shipping the order, unless you use a factoring company or similar. A factoring company (usually) lends you money against the right to collect on your bills, and cancels the debt as the bills are paid. They're often also collection agencies, and they're normally in the black, so they can grab tax credits for losses etc - thus making the bills more worth to them than to you.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Things like this do happen! Look at this site: http://www.alphagrip.com/
I first saw this over two years ago. They accepted pre-orders a year ago. I was sufficiently interested to get in on the deal. I finally got my unit last week (my wife called it a "valentine's present" so I can't get my hands on it for another two weeks, though).
The AlphaGrip is innovative, but not as technically challengin as the Optimus. But things like this do happen.
But the Optimus looks cool. I hope they don't wait a year to ship.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Wow, someone who actually uses the Insert key for something!! Amazing. I tend to rank it as one of the keys that I personally wouldn't mind losing, since all it seems to ever do is annoy me by switching to overwrite mode. Not that that happens often, heh. Just for your information, there are other keyboard shortcuts that are more well-known for copy and paste: control-c (copy) and control-v (paste). These are typically "advertised" in application menus, even.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}