Optimus Keyboard Starts Shipping

Tom's Hardware is reporting that the Optimus keyboard that everyone was so anxious for (although maybe less so when they saw the price tag) started shipping this week. "According to an announcement made on the Optimus project blog, keyboards are now shipping to customers who pre-ordered the $1564 keyboard nine months ago. Keyboards with passive keys are delayed and will be shipping in about a month, the manufacturer said. [...] Earlier this month, one of the first Optimus Maximus keyboards was sold for $2750 on Ebay." Engadget even got the chance to test one of these expensive toys out.

Comments

No thanks

[MonorailCat]

according to Engadget, not only is it wildly expensive, but it's painful to type on. I wish form followed function a little more often in the gadget world.

Design flaws

[gilesjuk]

The DC supply plugs into the back of the keyboard, ugly for such a otherwise expensive and well designed keyboard.

Why couldn't they have a split end on the keyboard cable with the DC input and USB connections, that way you would have no DC cable in sight.

Re:Review summary

[CRCulver]

Requires extra strength for keypresses, so unsuitable for typing more than a few minutes.

Don't a lot of old-timers say that the keyboards of old, where you actually got some resistence from the keys, were more comfortable to type with than the yielding keyboards of today?

In any event, it's interesting to see that advances are still being made in keyboard technologies. The input model of, say, the film minority Minority Report , where you have to wave your arms around would in reality prove highly exhausting. Voice input isn't anywhere near ready, especially for people like me who are entering a different language in each window on the screen. And unless Kurzweil is right after all, I'm sure we're still a long ways off from direct neural input.

Optimus fails it.

[TripMaster Monkey]

From the Engadget article:

Okay, why does typing on the Optimus suck, you ask? Well, although the keyboard uses mechanical switches and a lot of high quality components (evident when we pulled off some keys), and there is some clicky tactility to keypresses, as a whole it just requires way too much force to depress keys. And the larger the key, the more force is required, so enter is easier than space, but harder than tab. Let's put it this way, we sit around and type all day long and this thing wore us out in about 30 seconds to a minute. Carpal sufferers, beware.

So, the keyboard is painfully inadequate at doing the one thing keyboards are suppodes to be doing: data input. Kinda like a solid gold mouse that won't track, or a 80-inch monitor that won't display better than 800x600. Pretty pointless.

Stupid

[jointm1k]

This thing is the dumbest thing ever. Even more useless than the display on the G15 gaming keyboard. Who fricking watches the keys while typing or gaming?! And according to the review typing sucks on this keyboard. WTF? A keyboard that does not allow you to type properly has no reason to exist. And what looney pays $2750 for it?

Made by idiots, for idiots.

Flame on!

Re:Stupid

[poot_rootbeer]

Who fricking watches the keys while typing or gaming?!

I know a WHOLE LOT of hunt-and-peck typists. Doesn't everybody?

The idea of having a customizable display on each key is a sound one. A modern keyboard has five or six different shift keys, but at most two or three different glyphs on each keycap. A user can only discover other keyboard behaviors from cues provided away from the keyboard (looking at shortcut hints in menus, RTFM, etc.).

But if the stuff printed on each key changed when you press the Ctrl key? The user will be exposed to so much more functionality! And that's not even mentioning Function keys, or modal software (like vi), or...

The decisions to use high-resolution full color OLEDs on each key, and require a external power source beyond USB's +5v, and cost twice as much as the computer it's hooked up to, and to make it suck at being a keyboard are all less defensible.

If they had made a keyboard that felt like a typical $20 OEM keyboard but had a 16x16 monochromatic LCD built into each key, and cost $100, I'd own one for each computer I use regularly.

pwned keyboards coming soon...

[Will the Chill]

Since these things appear to be mostly geared toward Windows users (yes, I know, some Mac too) it's only a matter of time before somebody releases as script-kiddy utility for pwning your friends' and enemies' keyboard OLEDs.

I can see it now. Grandma is surfing for recipes and all of a sudden her nice new keyboards starts showing all sorts of inappropriate text and images.

And plus apparently it sucks as a keyboard.

-WtC

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