Optimus Keyboard Pre-Orders In Mere Hours 319
godzillopiteco sends timely word that Art. Lebedev Studio is finally going to accept pre-orders for the Optimus Maximus Keyboard — in just under 11 hours at the time this story posts, according to the countdown timer on the site. (Late last year we were primed to pre-order in December 2006.) Read the project's blog for some recent developments.
Wow... that's cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Then I kept reading. I will definitely be getting myself one of these!
Re:Unless.. (Score:2, Interesting)
As the car industry has known for years those are both very valid reasons!
Look at the import tuner market... non-functional body kits, huge spoilers on front wheel drive cars, 'carbon fibre' overlays for regular steel hoods, etc etc etc.
Supplying expensive equipment for the gullible is a very profitable business! Just ask the audiophiles! ;) *ducks*
a new marketing avenue ! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:More details (Score:5, Interesting)
People actually want to do this, but the only thing stopping them is technology.
I guess at some point or other we have cursed keyboards for having fixed symbols and wished for something better, I remember the cards you used to place above your Fn keys for word processing and graphics programs, we all get freaked out remembering the keys to games and I would love to see my keys change fonts to match what I am typing.
This keyboard will give you all that, its not just another console - its new.
Having said all that, you can probably currently just keep a few customised boards [fentek-ind.com] and switch as needed for less than the current expected price.
What I want (Score:3, Interesting)
I want to be able to press, for example, a key that's labelled instead of typing
Wings on FWD cars (Score:2, Interesting)
I assume you meant "wings" when you wrote "spoilers"*. Anyway, a wing or spoiler on a front wheel drive car is not counter-intuitive. Many racing series use wings on front wheel drive cars (for example, see SCCA's Speed World Challenge [world-challenge.com] touring series, where a number of FWD cars from makes such as Acura and Mazda implement wings). Your assumption is that the wing is there to provide traction via downforce, which is definitely the case, but a wing/spoiler (especially a spoiler) also counteracts lift. The fact that the force is being applied to the rear of the car doesn't neccessarily mean the benefit is only seen by the rear wheels. The front wheels benefit as well, making it a useful addition in a high-speed racing scenario (as opposed to a low-speed racing scenario like autocross). A front splitter/spoiler is usually used in conjunction with the rear wing to help apply force to the front of the car as well as the rear.
That said, the park benches sold as wings to import tuners really are stupid, which was your original point. However "tunerz" wouldn't be buying non-functional cosmetic bits if there weren't functional reasons for the initial look. Tunerz buy aerokits and wings because race cars legitimately use aerokits and wings. The difference is that tunerz will never drive fast enough to see the benefit, and the kits they buy are intentionally exaggerated to emphasize form over function.
* A wing's core function is to generate downforce via negative lift -- it's an upside aerofoil; a spoiler's core function is to reduce upward lift by spoiling the airflow over the car's inefficent aerofoil shape that would otherwise lead to lift via Bernoulli's principle. While a wing may have a spoiling component, and a spoiler may also have a downforce component, the different designs maximize different effects.
Re:Wow... that's cool (Score:3, Interesting)
Each and every time you take your gaze off the monitor, off the code, your brain has to look at the keyboard. This is a little bit like saving a register on the stack doing an unrelated task and then loading the register back up again.
In short, spillage will slow you down a bit, the best way to become more productive is to memorise the shortcuts and not have to look at the keyboard.
I personally have and use the das keyboard [daskeyboard.com]. It's completely blank and the feel on the keys is amazing. I'm a proud owner of an IBM Model M13. I happily bang away on it at work, but the keys are a bit heavy. Compared to my m13, macbook pro keyboard, and Das keyboard I have tested myself faster on the Das.
On top of that I would like to add reviews of the optimus mini 3, they were 'sticky' and did not have a confortable click to them.
Re:A bit pricey (Score:5, Interesting)
You have it. All Optimus models so far are like this: Optimus 101, Optimus 103, Optimus 113.
All of those are prime numbers, and I doubt it's coincidental.
Re:Wow... that's cool (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't the 2nd version a buckle-spring keyboard? (you know, like the old school IBM keyboards with the extra 'clicky' sound) That would account for the price increase. Buckle-spring keyboards, although noisy and not too friendly in a business environment(mostly due to the noise), give off a very satisfying audible and tactile feel upon each keypress, unlike the more common membrane keyboards. Plus, buckle-spring keyboards do not wear out like membrane keyboards. I have a buckle-spring, and while it's a bit heavy and (quite frankly) pretty ugly, I cannot complain about the performance of the keyboard. Those things are solid, and (it's probably a psychological thing) encourages the user to learn to type faster and 'lighter' if that makes any sense. But they aren't cheap.
I know the first generation das keyboard was not bucklespring, but even the feel of the first generation das keyboard is excellent (I own a first gen das keyboard as well). The first gen keyboard has a 'light' touch to it as well, but nowhere near my bucklespring.
Over time, I've noticed that membrane keyboards have gotten quieter, but the offset is that you cannot tell whether or not you've confirmed the keyboard press. I'm talking about soft keyboards, like the current dell, apple, and (overall)laptop keyboards. Those things were built for business where visuals play an overrated importance, unfortunately not designed around performance. (fyi for a membrane keyboard, the first generation das keyboard was pretty noisy and had 'light' keys, somewhat like the oldschool compaq keyboards)
Re:Wow... that's cool (Score:3, Interesting)
I type in English part of the time, and in phonetic Korean part of the time, and the rest of the time I'm trying to get Chinese characters (actually Korean han ja, but very similar in scope... thousands of characters from the Chinese set) out of various keystroke combinations. It would be quite a boon to me if this thing could remap on the fly. Even worth $1500. But I'm not buying one until I know it'll do what I want. I'm also curious about the lifetimes of the OLEDs. My keyboard is powered up 24/7.
Re:What would be more practical... (Score:2, Interesting)
To make the thing more platform-independent, they chose to make it's layout storage (which can't be stripped away quite well) available as USB mass storage, so (in theory) you could use it without any problems in linux, windows, solaris, (insert your favourite os supporting usb storage devices here).
Seeing the SD card slot on the newest pictures leaves me a bit puzzled about it even having this internal layout storage. We'll have to wait and see...
Apricot did this 24 YEARS AGO(!) (Score:3, Interesting)
It's surprising that this idea never took off elsewhere. Granted, it would probably have been moderately (but not prohibitively) expensive then, but I'm sure that the cost would have come down. Maybe ACT had patented it, but if that was the reason, why would they sit on it?
I remember first coming across a photo of the Apricot PC keyboard in the late 1980s, six years after its release, and it *still* looked cool (I didn't realise it was that old at the time).
Given the amount of "extended functionality" PC keyboards over the years, it's surprising that this hasn't been done. It might not be as pretty as the Optimus keyboard promises to be, but it would have been a cheap way to add useful (or "cool") functionality, even moreso a few years ago. It seems like this would have been functionality lots of people would have liked at an affordable price, so why did it never appear?