By Evan Ackerman
Don’t feel bad; Art Lebedev only released 200 Optimus Maximus keyboards for preorder, to be delivered in early December of this year. They are, of course, all gone, but my guess would be that they were almost all spoken for already anyway.
If you’re not familiar with the Optimus keyboard, it’s claim to fame is that all 113 keys have built in programmable color (yes, it’s back to color) OLED displays, with a resolution of 48×48 and a framerate (yep, they can display animations) of at least 10 fps. Predictably, it’s not cheap at just under $14 per key, amounting to around $1600 for the whole shebang. That’s a far cry from “out in 2006, will cost about $300” that we heard after the story broke back in 2005, but hey, at least (as of this December, anyway) it won’t be vaporware anymore.
And although we were among the very first to announce the Optimus keyboard, I don’t think that’s going to do us any good in terms of getting our grubby little hands on one of the illustrious December 200, unless David just hasn’t told me the good news yet…
[ No freaking way we’re getting one, and let me tell you, I’m going to call it right here: come December, there’s going to be some sort of delay. Or whatever. Oh, and by the way, there seems to be 200 more for “late December”. – Ed. ]
I can’t understand why they don’t pull their shit together and actually make this keyboard – so many people would buy it its not funny
$14 per key. That means my keyboard costs as much as two Optimus keys!