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The Optimus Mini Keyboard

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Feb 01, 2006 08:53 AM
from the now-isn't-that-cute dept.
Input Devices Hardware
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.
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  • But is it functional? I wonder to myself, "what will I put on those keys?" Pretty much just things that normally are an Alt-Click away anyways. I don't expect the keyboard of being able to handle serious macros, or anything.
    • The demo on the site demonstrates it really well. The whole point is, it *is* extremely customisable and by the looks of things they will be releasing some form of SDK. I more see it as a stepping stone to when we can buy an array of 10 of these keys which would then be incredibly useful.
    • I wonder to myself, "what will I put on those keys?"
      Screen-caps of your favourite pr0n sites of course. What else?
    • "what will I put on those keys?"
      Ctrl, Alt and Delete ? ;)
    • I wouldn't buy it to actually *press* the keys. I'd be more interested in programming the displays to show something useful. That would be pretty cool.

        • Re:If I was going to buy it.... (Score:5, Funny)

          by Provocateur (133110) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @01:14PM (#14617703) Homepage
          ...and then your girlfriend borrows your PC for awhile, you start a utility that will make the OLEDs draw a big red heart with the words 'Will you marry me?' (just like the cards the audience flips over in the stadiums during games).

          Imagine the possibilities...

          Imagine having a girlfriend...

    • I also wonder how obnoxious the finger grease may be. Fingerprints are annoying on an LCD. If they are visable on tiny screens you can press (which are known to have more bacteria/crud on them then the toilet seat), I can imagine it could deter from the beauty of the keyboard technology quite a bit.....
      • 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!)
          • Except of course there will never be sufficient market penetration for anyone to actually bother putting support for this in their programs.

            Getting operating system support (probably through drivers or plugins) is a sufficiently "killer" feature to promote these. Just imagine what can be done without individual program support:

            *) Changing language layouts remaps the glyphs on the keyboard
            *) Holding down a modifier key (shift, caps lock, alt, Windows, etc.) changes all the glyphs to show what you'll actually

  • Happy salivating! (Score:5, Funny)

    by digitaldc (879047) * on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:00AM (#14615100)
    Just don't do it on your new keyboard, [slashdot.org] they are already disgusting enough, thanks!
  • Hope their keyboards are better than their web servers! Even mirrordot didn't catch a good mirror of the images. bummer...
  • "This is not vapourware, pre-orders are being take now with a cut price until April 2nd"

    Sadly many projects which have never appeared have also taken pre-orderes.

    So this "justification" doesn't amount to very much. I'd love to have a look at the prices, but sadly the site is down so I can't.

    • Re:Not vapourware? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RESPAWN (153636) <caldwellNO@SPAMtulanealumni.net> on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:04AM (#14615129) Homepage Journal
      I don't think it's uncommon for companies to rely on the pre-order funds to finish final development of a product. Sometimes they just don't get enough though, and they never release their product.

      • Dude, it's just a pre-order, not a pre-purchase... (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        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.

        • Re:Dude, it's just a pre-order, not a pre-purchase (Score:4, Informative)

          by Richthofen80 (412488) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:39AM (#14615351) Homepage
          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.

          • Re:Dude, it's just a pre-order, not a pre-purchase (Score:4, Informative)

            by Eivind Eklund (5161) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:55AM (#14615505) Journal
            I don't know about laws - I *do* know about agreements, though, as I've coded this stuff for customers. Credit card payments work as a two phase system. In phase 1, when the customer orders, you reserve the funds from the customer account. This "feels like" a charge - the money isn't available for your use any more.

            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.

    • From the Art.Lebedev website:

      The keyboard is in production. The first lot is set to arrive on May 15.

      Retail price of Optimus mini three is $100 (subject to change after April 2).

      The keyboard will be available for pre-order this week.

      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

        • That's very simple: because when they unveiled the Optimus design as an art concept a year ago the response was overwhelming, geeks everywhere got mad and started frothing at the very idea of owning that think and being able to type on it.

          They started doing hardware design because people were damn interrested in owning a physical version of their conceptual design, and they thought "well, if it can work why not doing it?".

          They're more than likely doing it in partnership with a HW maker too (I think they s

  • 3 keys? Perfect! (Score:5, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:04AM (#14615120)
    I know what I'm mapping my three keys to: CTRL, ALT, and DEL
    • I know what I'm mapping my three keys to: CTRL, ALT, and DEL

      I got to the site a day before it was Slashdotted (thank you, Digg) and that will be one of the possible combinations. There was also a "Any" key configuration where all of the keys literally switched to the word any. There was one where you could control iTunes and another one where you could control picture or PowerPoint slideshows (the keys actually showed mini previews of the next and previous pictures/slides). Really cool, but at $100 for 3 ke

  • Cool commercial applications (Score:5, Insightful)

    by binaryDigit (557647) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:05AM (#14615135)
    I think that for personal use, this is pretty much nothing but eye-candy. However, I can see some pretty decent commercial uses (note not necessarily in it's current configuration). Keyboards that are able to adapt to the application their running in a kiosk environment (where the core qwerty keys remain fixed, but the others change as needed) for example. One BIG use would be ..... the keyboard as a display. Imagine one of these keyboards in a kiosk where it's actually displaying content as it treats the keys as a miniature multi-segmented display. It would be quite catchy and you could drive a significant bit of content through it. Picture the main interface display being the keyboard (say something simple like some type of ATM), with the standard display containing other information, or perhaps a "guide", or showing more details.
    • For the under-educated fast food worker, you could put pictures of burgers, fries, and shakes on the keys.

      Getting them to correctly make change, OTOH, is beyond what the technology in the keyboard can offer.

      Chip H.
      • In a clothes shop just after Christmas, I saw a large point-of-sale keyboard which had a numeric keypad with small monochrome LCD screens in the keys. As the sales person entered information, the text on the keys would change - I was immediately reminded of the Optimus keyboard.

        It didn't look particularly new, either - anyone else seen such things?

  • Money (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wongn (777209) <nathan.random @ g mail.com> on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:05AM (#14615140) Homepage
    Well, news was spreading quickly through Digg and elsewhere hours before this story was posted.

    I don't know where you got that $300 figure from. If you're extrapolating it directly up, it'd be $4000; but Art Lebedev are still claiming that it will cost "Less than a decent mobile phone"; which would then give you $300. Did I just argue myself in circles? ^^
    But, for people interested in getting the full keyboard, I can't see any of them forking out an extra $100 for these 3 keys; which don't have the greatest of practical applications.

  • $100 for three keys (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Refried Beans (70083) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:20AM (#14615223) Homepage
    That's "Piece of History" pricing right there. It sounds like they need the cash in order to make it through to production of the full keyboard. So they took a prototype, sized it down to something they could afford to manufacture and finished the software they need to make it work. They can use this piece to test the market and work out any problems in their manufacturing process. Sounds like a really good move to me.
    • Agreed, while the Optimus seemed ludicrous, this manages to strike a decent balance between being expensive, pointless, cool, and high-tech: probably decent enough to slacken a few thousand wallets.
      • Things like this do happen! Look at this site: http://www.alphagrip.com/ [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

  • Picture (Score:5, Informative)

    by teslar (706653) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:24AM (#14615246)
    For those complaining about the site being down without a mirror of a picture.... a little googling does help [engadget.com]

  • Keyboard Layout labels (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dada21 (163177) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:29AM (#14615285) Homepage Journal
    I use so many different keyboards over the year and I wish the industry had a different label for each layout design. Some have large backspace keys with small enter keys, others have tiny backspace keys with mammoth enter keys. I think I've seen 3 or 4 layouts over time, which is crazy considering that typing becomes more efficient if the keys are in the same place. I figure the best way to get manufacturers to conform a little better is to name the layouts, and once you have your preference, you'll tend to buying the ones you're familiar with. That way manufacturers can see what consumers want and don't want. I'm sure there is a market for different layouts, but it frustrates me when I can't recall what keyboard I am used to without actually buying a new one and then finding out a day later that I'm used to a different sized "any" key.

  • 5000 hours? (Score:5, Informative)

    by aderusha (32235) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:40AM (#14615359) Homepage
    From the FAQ [artlebedev.com], 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.

  • I know what to use those for (Score:5, Funny)

    by stunt_penguin (906223) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:43AM (#14615380)
    The 3,5 and 7 keys, making this my optimus prime keyboard.


    I'm so sad.

  • '5000 hours of continuous use' (Score:3, Insightful)

    by affinity (118397) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:49AM (#14615434) Homepage
    This seems a little slim to me. I'm not up on the expected lifetime of OLED tech but I hope it has a nifty sleep function. Because 5000 is just over 200 days of contiuous use. How many of us keep our computers running all the time....

  • I love the smell of... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by squoozer (730327) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @10:08AM (#14615587) Homepage

    fresh vapourware in the morning. Come on - this is a scam. If it isn't a scam than at a minimum it won't be as good as the pictures they are currently showing. The display will fail within a year, the keys will be heavy and nasty and the API will suck.

    OLED technology just isn't good enough for this to be viable yet. Maybe, if you were NASA, you could get this keyboard to work but then howmany of us have unlimited piles of cash? To anyone that does happen to have piles of cash to burn please send some my way - thanks.

  • Sod the colour screens (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hattig (47930) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @10:30AM (#14615809) Journal
    Make a version with a long-life OLED colour (not 5000 hours because of the blue) monochrome display.

    Looking at my keyboard, woo, look, black on white. No reds, purples, greens ... well, that might be mouldy cake between the keys.

    I'm sure that monochrome would be cheaper for a start, require less bandwidth to update, and for keyboard uses, just as useful.

    Currently it is three pressable displays.

    Stick a 64x64 monochrome/greyscale OLED into a key-sized key, and make a keyboard from that. Leave the full colour version until the technology is better - both on the OLED side and on the keyboards with display side.

  • Looks like someone's 59 days early. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Theovon (109752) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @10:34AM (#14615855)
    Hey, guys, April fools is in two months!

    In all seriousness, I'm curious what anyone would do with a keyboard that has only three keys on it. And who would buy it for $100?

    It might be useful for embedded applications, like some mall kiosk where you push buttons to get through a menu. But it's still a bit pricy and short on keys.

  • Hardcore programmers KB. (Score:5, Funny)

    by TonyZahn (534930) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @12:36PM (#14617324) Homepage
    The true programmer's keyboard only needs 3 keys: 1, 0, and backspace (and the old types will tell you you don't need the backspace).

  • Menu-driven interfaces. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Vo0k (760020) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @12:45PM (#14617401) Journal
    For those who bitch 3 keys are useless: These are 3 choices at a time, not 3 fixed choices all the time. You can create any menu-based user interface using it. Most have 4 keys ("up", "down", "OK/Enter", "Cancel/Leave" (usually found in cell phones). Still it can be done with 3 keys, if you give up "Cancel" and replace it with a menu position - My beeper had an interface like that, worked fine - or leave out "Up" and just cycle through the whole list with "Down" every time.
    • The pre order section says the cut rate pre order price is $100 (for the Mini).

      • Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "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."

        Cool. Then you can't see me calling you a cock faced sheep felcher!
    • I applaud them for attempting to release even three keys. I think they've got some guts. It isn't cost effective in small quantities, but if they can secure guaranteed sales in certain areas, they can bring the pricing down by bulk purchase so much.

      Good luck to them, if they pull it off.

      I can't really afford $100 on that right now... especially as I am 90% at my laptop. Ah well.
      • Come to think of it, that would make the full keyboard cost over $300. Damn.

        Still really freakin' cool, though.
        • I think it's an absolute pure luxury right now, and you can tell that they are aware of this, but to think that one day - maybe in 5 years - these really will be a viable purchase is exciting to myself. If the keyboard is good, this isn't a gimmick... it's a really really good way of working. I know I could do with easily seeing what every key on MY keyboard does on a long days slog in Discreet Combustion.
        • That's only to be expected, but I'd wager quite a lot of people would be ready to pay $300-$400 for the full Optimus (and i'll admit that i'd probably be one of them :/)
        • 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
      • I applaud them for attempting to release even three keys
        The only there keys keyboard you will ever need is this one [flickr.com]. Of course with this technology you could remap them to CTRL+ALT+^H for Unix/Linux freaks :)

    • Re:What It May Cost?..... a LOT!....... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Slugster (635830) on Wednesday February 01 2006, @09:45AM (#14615399)
      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.
      ~

    • Re:keys (Score:3, Informative)

      by Emil Brink (69213)
      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.

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