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.

Comments

Re:The concept is very cool, and very cute

[AKAImBatman]

I guess a good application would be a multi-lingual keyboard.

*ding* You are correct, sir!

I have my home computer setup to switch between english and russian cyrillic. It's a real pain to have all those stickers on the keys. Not only do they fade and occasionally stick to you instead of the keyboard, but playing video games (such as Quake III) is a guaranteed way to shear the suckers right off. The result is that you end up with spotty coverage of the keyboard.

Some people use a keyboard overlay (a piece of plastic that is molded to the shape of the keyboard), but those are much harder to come by, don't always fit your keyboard, and interfere with typing.

Now with the Optimus, a switch from english to russian would result in the key glyphs themselves changing. No more worrying about stickers, just *BAM*, there you go. And if my father-in-law is over and wants to type in German for some reason (he's quite good with the language), he can switch the keyboard layout without having to hunt and peck for the keyboard layout.

As a nice bonus, games can finally tell me what keys I'm supposed to press instead of going through the config screen and trying to memorize all the combinations. (Or worse, get out one of those stand-up cheatsheets. Like I have the desk real-esate for that!)