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Optimus Mini Three OLED keyboard reviewed
Robbedoeske writes "The first Optimums Mini Three keyboards have been shipped to Holland and Tweakers.net managed to lay hands on one of them to review this precious gem." Apparently the drivers crash a lot, consume way to much CPU, the device is capable of only 3 frames per second, and the packaging makes the images look far more crisp than the actual device. And with a price tag of over $100, I'm scared to imagine what the price of a full keyboard will actually be should it ever actually ship. But it still would be neat.
There's more to the Prime edition than meets the eye.
Meta will eat itself
Am I the only one who wants to make a driver hack for the Optimus so that when the computer says, "Press any key to continue" that there actually IS an Any key?
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
I am shocked... shocked I tell you to learn that the image on the package looks better than the actual device. How could this possibly have happened? Who would dream of such a thing?
Onto the device itself. I'm glad to see it develop and that it's more than just a concept. The technology is still in its infancy and it will take time for it to improve and come down to an affordable level. I'm looking forward to the day I can get a full keyboard like this.
Slashdot: where repeating an article in a post is "+5 Insightful"
It's buggy, slow, fraudulently packaged, consumes an inordinate amount of your CPU, has been delayed many times, delivers on only a fraction of its originally advertised functionality, and is extremely expensive.
Has someone let Steve Ballmer know that Optimus has stolen Microsoft's marketing plan?????
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
I read through the article, and it looked like just a normal embedded chip with extra RAM hooked in for the displays. I wouldn't be suprized if the extra CPU on the PC is used to refresh the displays often.
Ugh.
I think a OLED full keyboard would be cool, but maybe if they used a double-USB device scheme it would be better: USB Keyboard and small USB storage for storing GIF files of each key.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
It's expensive and buggy... But it's a great proof-of-concept and can only improve from here.
While I don't see much purpose for the 3 button model, I can't wait to see how the full keyboard performs and what sort of price we'll be looking at to purchase one.
Imagine being able to use those to switch virtual desktops, and having an image of the virtual desktop on those keys! =O As a bonus side effect, that'll clear up a bit of room on the taskbar, which is a pretty big deal for me. I prefer to have as much room on my taskbar devoted to tasks and not other misc stuffs such as applets, a gigantic clock, or thumbnails of each desktop. I'm seriously getting twitchy about the prospect of this xDD
The author of this article is hereby banned from using the word "gem" ever again, except to describe a precious stone.
check this out,
This site can actually cope with a slashdoting pretty easily,
Nevertheless its pretty cool to look at their stats and see the slashdotting take place:
http://tweakers.net/stats
Scroll down to "reviews" to see the major increase in traffic since a few minutes.
I think that this beauty is a nice thing. We just need to wait for cheap chinese copy :) :)
Or one greatly overpriced, but with additional special features (CTRL+Alt+Del in one button) MS version
jackharrer
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
So we have OLED for keyboard?
What actually happened to those predictions that OLED would soon replace LCD for monitors?? Is anything happening in the mainstream?
Wincopy
If you are watching porn is it possible to have a mini thumbnail of your video playback display on the keypad as well?
This is a genuine question!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Just configure the three keys as ctrl, alt, and delete.
:)
...should be Ctrl, Alt, and Delete!
I know a good use for that keyboard ...
http://www.helldesk.dk/keyboard-ctrl-alt-del.jpg
Other then "gadget factor" whats the real value in this?
This reminds me of the "Tablet PC" revolution (I baught one). Although a great piece of technology there wasn't a significant increase in productivity or features that warented the extra effort to adapt to the technology.
A big win for any "bleeding edge" technology is if the added productivity and features out way the effort to convert from an existing platform.
Winning Examples:
iPod (MP3 Player)
Mouse -> Cordless Mouse
Touchpad
Cell Phone OS' (When a cellphone started doing more then dialing)
PDA
Losers:
One-handed Keyboard
Tablet PC
OLED Keyboard
If your average user has to change they're process and spend alot of time configuring with low return on the effort your user accaptance is going to be significantly reduces.
Sure you can through any piece of technology in front of me and I'll play with it for a week or a month but if I can't adapt it to existing effort or it changes me to do things differantly then I'll put it down.
-- Disclaimer: I can't really back up anything I post on
Am I alone in reading the blurb on Slashdot and not having a clue what it was about? Please folks, a three word description for the unititated would be nice.
Optimus was the Radio Shack speaker line at one time, so I immediately thought audio. Then I saw keyboard, then I saw three button, which sounds like a mouse. Then I saw excessive CPU usage, which doesn't sound like any keybaord OR mouse that I know of...
At which point it seemed that there wasn't whole lot of reasons to RTFA.
Three Squirrels
FTA: "claims a good fifty percent of CPU-capacity of the 933MHz laptop"
Yeah, 50%, yada yada, but 450 mhz of whatever crap ass cpu they have in their review pc could likely be under 10% on a modern desktop chip.
Then he says: "Still not perfect, but even better than the hardware, is the software. On this matter, the Russian developers certainly deserve some credit because of the frequent updates and the quick response to reported problems."
Huh??? They deserve credit for creating problems and responding to (read: not necessarily fixing) problems they created? (Spare the immature microsoft references.) The only thing worse than this reviewer's apparent buying decisions is his spelling and grammar.
Unicomp. The true one and only heir to the IBM Model M.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Dilbert tells the customer, "This is our new product, it has just one button and we push it in the factory before we ship it."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
for NSFW keycaps!
shooting is not too good for my enemies
"It's expensive, slow, sucks CPU, and crashes. The packaging is photoshopped by the same guy who removes the moles, stretch marks and rolls of skin in the Victoria's Secret catalogues.
BUT I GOTTA HAVE IT!"
Steve Jobs must be behind this somewhere, because you are under the control of a powerful Reality Distortion Field.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Thank you, to all the dorks who buy overpriced, half-baked, barely-functional products like this one. You fund the research and development that makes these things useful for the rest of us. We salute you.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
1. Have a look at some of those "crap ass CPUs" in laptops before shooting your mouth. An old 933 MHz P3 laptop will run circles around a similarly clocked P4 Prescott. The P3 features _much_ higher IPC (instructions per cycle). There's a reason why the Banias and Dothan (Centrino) and later Core/Core2 are based on the P3 core, and not on the P4.
The Prescott still wins on the whole by sheer virtue of being clocked 4 times faster, but the different IPC may still screw your maths up big time. Some 450 MHz wasted on a "crap ass" P3 will mean something like 600+ MHz wasted on a Prescott, which for some desktops can mean 20%-25% wasted on just a funky 3-key keyboard.
2. Even _if_ it were "only" 10%, like you claim, it's still 10% wasted on a stupid 3-key keyboard. But, heck, even if it were a full keyboard, there's no excuse to need that much CPU power. The software should just upload the images to the keyboard and then stay the fuck out of the way. Even complex sound-mixing software and drivers needs less CPU power nowadays. There's no excuse for a keyboard driver to need more.
At any rate, I don't want it taking that kind of CPU time when I'm playing or doing anything else. If I wanted only 90% of the CPU, I'd have bought a CPU clocked at only 90% of the speed in the first place.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Three screens?
Kill them.
Kill them all.
Do it!
Have you read my journal today?
sues over the use of their Optimus brand name?
What i like about this is innovation in the keyboard. Not that the keyboard needs to be changed. I enjoy being able to pick up a cheap KB for a few bucks. But it'd be interesting to see what they come up with.
Of course, i'd go with "self-cleaning" before screens. My KB is a premier crud puppy nursery.
Have you read my journal today?
It's a nice toy and all, but in my opinion, any practicality is fleeting. Here's why:
I work with a lot of design programs every day. As such, I get tired of moving my mouse from one tool to the other and have discovered (unlike many in my office) the joy of shortcut keys. While I first needed a cheat sheet to help with the differences between my various programs, after some repitition I was able to easily remember "V" in Photoshop is "A" in Multi-Ad Creator. While an Optimus would have been ideal at first, quickly it would have been rendered useless in favor of committing keys to memory.
Furthermore, it seems to be removed, but when I last checked on this product, the "shelf life" for lack of a better term was listed. It was the number of hours the device would be suspected to last. I don't recall the exact number but when a friend and I calculated it out it ended up being not to terribly long for a product of that price.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
It seems you are 4 jokes late :)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Got there and was told "De MySQL server ligt te slapen". Looks like I'll have to come back when the MySQL server decides to get up. I think it had a heavy night partying with /.ers.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Get a good patent lawyer. I was in the process of patenting this same thing several years ago. My patent attorney was horrible though. Charge way to much, and did way to little. He didn't file for over a year. After this designer filed we decided to drop the issue instead of trying to go through litigation. Ironically, the PIC they use is the same that I use at work. If this product does several of the features intended with my design, it will be a very benificial product indeed.
Which is already 5 jokes too many.
Yay for NetworkMirror.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
To their server... It consumes so much CPU that the sql-server just crashed.... or did they just get /.'ed?
I got what looks like a server error when I followed the link:
"De MySQL server ligt te slapen..."
I did a bablefish translation and it comes back with.
"Fuck, my MySQL install can't handle the Slashdot effect..."
Dead Programmer has an informative review over here: http://www.deadprogrammer.com/optimus-mini-three-f ull-review
stubborn tiny lights vs. clustering darkness foreverok?
http://www.drinky.org.uk/stuff/ctrlaltdelete.jpg
ZERO. totally useless for me.
The Optimus Mini Three Support Forum is in both English and German. Perhaps not surprisingly, the forum with by far the most activity is "English - Bugs." There is also a tiny bit of discussion from plugin developers.
With so many PC games using the keyboard for control by the player, I'm surprised that QWERTY is still the only kind that I ever see. What kind of reconfigurable "task keyboards" are gamers already using? Any with reconfig keycap displays to match reconfig commands triggered by pressing them? Any that are smarter, like learning common combos and autoconfig'ing to a single key? Any that work more advanced switching than just press/trigger (like going beyond "Caps Lock")?
These gizmos are the most personal part of a PC, staying in contact with our body much of the day, and representing the most used "user interface" of any mode. Are they really no different from the IBM Selectrics, except cheaper and USB?
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make install -not war
Why not make the OLED's mouse buttons instead?
Two OLED buttons would be just fine.
And they should be able to make a driverless interface using the HID class and USB. It's just silly to write your own drivers when USB drivers exist on all platforms to interface your hardware with.
:(){
On the last page of the review there is a picture of the three buttons after being customized. On the last button it seems to say "Vrouw topless op Google Earth", which I belive means "Woman topless on Google Earth".
How could Slashdot miss that story? THIS IS STUFF THAT MATTERS!
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
Finaly a keyboard the cat won't try to use
"Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
I'd put a nice big red blinking PANIC button on it. Everytime there's something I don't like, I'd smash that button really, really hard. I'd let it do a kill -9 or something.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I bought one for the gadget-nerdiness-factor (about 8 months ago :). Now about a month ago they gave away the software + programming APIs. I was kinda disappointed at the spot, since this is not really a USB device. Inside, it uses an USB to serial converter. This is why the display refresh rate is kinda low. The screens themselves are 96x96 per screen, 16bit color. They tend to "flash" a little (I guess that's the OLED for ya).
:)
I've been programming this device for a weekends worth now. I checked the software they gave and it was ok. It does crash VERY often, though it's not the device that's causing the crashes. The USB to serial chip they use is made by Porlific and I think it's the PL-2303. Now googling for that seems to indicate prolific has had a bad history with working drivers.
Now being the nerdy hacker type, it seems that for me it only crashes when disconnecting by software. So my solution was to create a stub program in C# that connects to the device, stays connected all the time and listens for incoming TCP connections and routes those to the device. This way the computer stays connected to the device all the time and I can restart the controlling software as often as I like. Haven't had any problems with this approach yet. Still I hope Prolific fixes their serial drivers.
As for when it comes to the performance, I've noticed something weird. All of my software is currently in C# and has not been optimized. But when feeding the device with image data, the program that sends it to the device takes around 9%, while the program that generates the packets takes somwthing like 40%. This seems kinda weird and I do have some hope of fixing it.
As for the device itself, the reviews I've read have been pretty accurate. It always makes me feel bad to press a display. And the buttons are not as "solid" as I'd like.
But with enough work I hope to make even something good out of it. I was hoping of making an animated game, but no way of doing that with that serial adapter standing in between.
You're obviously not a nerd then. So what are you doing on Slashdot?
Apparently "stroomstoring" means "Slashdotting", and their translation software approximated that as "power failure".
First, I'd like to take an oppurtunity at the most over looked joke yet.
In Russia, the keyboard uses your computer.
Serously, though... they are making a decent breakthrough. The mini-3 is s'posed to provide income with the technology, so that they might actually finish production on the full size keyboard. Someone mentioned a dual USB for this thing, though... why not have memory in the device to cache images for the keys. A cell phone processor could handle everything from there. Instead of updating drivers, this device would have to be flashed. Mini programs could be loaded to the device, and ran independantly of the computer. I thought this was where they were headed in the first place. I guess they are trying to keep their costs down.
Meanwhile, the full size price is "close to the price of a good cell phone". Obviously, making these things would be less than the price of that cell phone, so why not put the memory and processor in it? With a $400 USD price tag (my estimate) on the end product, it had better be awesome.
PS: That is what part of the alphabet would look like if the letters "Q" and "R" were removed.
The conclusion is a bit odd. In the other pages, the reviewer states that the OLEDs show a slightly green, dull image. Then in the conclusion, he says the images are "bright and clear", a complete backflip. He also goes from thinking the way the software is written is slightly wrong, to thinking it's even better than the hardware!
...why not start with one of these? It projects a virtual keyboard onto a flat surface, why not hack it to change the character driver? At least you're not stuck waiting for some breakthrough in manufacturing technology to get a full-sized keyboard...
(Personally, this thing gets my vote for "gadget most likely to actually attract babes in a club". Yes, I understand actually having this category for gadgets makes it extremely unlikely that I ever will attract babes in a club, gadgets or not.)
Just junk food for thought...
A very special episode on an all-new, "CSI:<insert town here>"
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
since some large company is going to buy one of these, find a better way to manufacture them, and have them on the market very soon.
Then sue these people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In the end, it comes down to 1 thing... Computer fanatics don't look at the keyboard. They don't look away from the screen at all. If they have to look away to tell what it going on, they are missing something on-screen to do it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
There would be lots of uses. In games you could show icons with the actual functionality of the keys (fire, grenade, teleport, hyderdrive, whatever).
In word processing applications you could show which keys do things such as undo, etc
When you hold shift or caps the letters can switch between upper and lower case
When you press CTRL the associated function keys could change to show their designated function.
Lots of possibilities here, though a lot do depend on the software itself supporting the keyboard.
First of all, I'd have to say thanks for all the firsthand information!
Secondly, it seems that currently it only supports windows, which is too bad as I could see a lot of hackers of the other OS's finding this a usefule device. Open drivers (not just a programming API) would be a nice thought too
My primary beef with the device would be the aforementioned serial converter, which would really such on a fullsize keyboard, as well as the flicker issue. Hopefully they'll fix it up for the full-sized keyboard device, in which case I might actually buy one (if somebody comes up with a driver for my OS).
I reviewed this weeks ago and included a video that clearly demonstrates how unstable and unreliable the software is. Hope you enjoy it. Forgive the quality of the video. I had a flu.
Interesting tech demo. Maybe they should make a 10-key version next, to corner the game market.
I know I'd buy something that gives me the Guild Wars skill bar in a hardware version. I'm sure many other players of other MMORPGs would like to have actual keys to press that show the skills currently in the quickbar.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Three keys short from really being able to have one of these
Yarr.
Tweakers? I'm not taking tech advice from a bunch of meth heads.
(well, it's what I first thought)
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Cany anyone explain to my why this is better than touch-sensitive screens that have been around for years? An LCD touch screen, lying on it's back would be cheaper and have a much better frame rate! ;)
I'm surprised they didn't mention this old gag
:D
If it cost $20 instead of $100, I would buy one just to display those three buttons on my desktop
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
When someone gets a prompt to hit "any key" change all of the pics on a the keyboard into a combined image in large bold letters "ANY KEY" Make installs interactive... When a yes or no question comes up change the entire keyboard to blank with a large sentence in the center that says
"" and then have the keys the arrows are pointing to colored green and red and flash!
One of the solutions could be to have a small memory cache/cpu on board of the keyboard which gets stuffed by the driver; only making the animated keys to be using cpu load. This way the cpu doesn't need to handle all the load and the keyboard will take most of the load on itself...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I couldn't imagine life without my Model M (connected to my new Pentium 4) but I must admit, I would buy an OLED keyboard with buckling springs, and I'd pay good money for it too.
The only issue with the Model M...there is no way of talking on the phone and typing discretely at the same time.
In a half-page comment you gave me a far better understanding of whether I want one now or later than page after page of review.
You remind me of the people who come to my office asking a computer question then get mad when I tell them to send an email to the helpdesk. They say, "but it's just a real quick question, why can't you answer it now?", to which I say, "you could have saved yourself the energy and probably had an answer quicker if you had sent the email in the first place."
I actually recall a Playboy CD-ROM available in the early 90s (around 1993) designed for Mac OS 8/9 (ca.) and Windows 3.1;
When used in Win3 you could minimize the video window, and the 16x16 icon would then keep showing the video. W00t.
Come to think of it, that was probably a QT-feature. Still.
Oh, and er. The porn. Was. Erm. My cousin's. Yeah. Totally not mine.
Onto the device itself. I'm glad to see it develop and that it's more than just a concept.
...), but even if you could fix all these glitches, a whole keyboard of this would suck.
... but what if your app changed the labels on alt and/or tab? (They show mock-ups where this is done.) Some keys have system-wide meaning, and relabelling them makes them virtually useless for this.
It's a bad concept. Not only is it poorly executed here (buggy, slow, expensive, only 3 keys,
- One of the nice things about a keyboard is that it's stable. The key marked "T" is always "T". Ever had your computer slow down for a second while it swaps to disk? Can you imagine waiting for your keyboard to update? (What key would it register as, if I pressed it while it was swapping between two labels?)
- "E-paper" sounds like a good solution, because it sounds like "paper", and paper is cheap. Unfortunately "e-paper" is currently also insanely expensive.
- If you had a keyboard which applications could remap, they'd do it poorly. Some by accident: there are always programs which don't get everything right. I don't want them messing with my keyboard.
- Others, simply because it's a hard problem: who controls your keys? Alt-tab is always alt-tab
- And even if you assume that only your app will need the key, how will you know how it's to be used? Sometimes pressing a key once does something different than holding it down. Sometimes keys will need to be disabled -- will you have dimmed keys? (How frustrating would that be?) Sometimes it depends on other context, like where the mouse is -- will you dim keys based on mouse movement? Sometimes it depends on the state of computation -- will you disable keys based on events that aren't user-initiated?
- Finally, the user's hands are on the keyboard! Dynamically-changing information is something the user wants to (and should) look at. If there's one place where you *don't* *want* to put information for the user to look at, it's directly under their hands.
That's not to say that current keyboard designs are good. I haven't seen any current keyboard designs that I think are good. They all suck. But a full Optimus keyboard doesn't fix many of the things you can fix without OLEDs, and adds huge potential for suckage -- both intentional and unintentional -- that doesn't exist with dumb old fixed labels.
The *one* use I could possibly see for this is labelling my function keys. I have a whole row of keys labelled "F1" through "F12" that do something different everywhere, and I have no idea what. Change the labels on those, if you want -- then they might actually get used. But don't change keys that I'm using.
... in the early versions, if ever, that is sure clear. For many applications you may want to remap the keyboard on a per application basis, which means that it would have to update the display as you change focus from one window to another. For certain multilingual applications, or for calculating with an APL interpreter using it special character set, it will need to switch labels when one of those stupid windows popups arrives and steals away the focus, or anytime you switch the active window. If the thing is dog-slow in doing that (which the 3-button version implies), it just ain't gonna cut the mustard...
I can see many people doing a Dr. Banner at this point...
They say in the review "it won't cost $5400" because the displays will be smaller and some other things...
But it's a fair chance it will cost $1000. The prices per key aren't going to come down a huge amount. Maybe the 64x64 display is half the price of 96x96, and with larger numbers they halve the price again... it's still a heck of a lot of money.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
...but my keyboard just crashed :/