Optimus Maximus pre-order starts May 20th
By Thomas Ricker 
posted May 16th 2007 7:34AM
posted May 16th 2007 7:34AM
[Thanks, Andrew H.]
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Hey, leave Apple out of this!
engadget should be proud! they got their very own key on the left hand side!
seriously i wish i had 1600 dollars to bust on this.
or i could get a laptop and a ps3
overpriced much?
$1536 says they're gonna flop big time on this deadline.
i will have 2 please!
@Argot: LOL! funny people up in the wee hours of the morning.
Argh it seems they have changed the display sizes :( all keys have the same small display size, and not like the pre-production version full-sized displays for example for the space key :((
I know that if I were an industry professional at this point in my life with the money to spend, I would have pre-ordered immediately. As a regular user of Photoshop, Final Cut, Illustrator, (Aperture, maybe soon) etc, I would have benefited greatly from this keyboard. It's not always easy to remember what the keyboard shortcuts for five hundred different functions are.
I've been waiting for this keyboard for a while now. Yeah, it's hella expensive to begin with, but it would have to be. Early adopters of emerging technologies always pay more to sort of support the development that has been done. Once they've sold enought to cover initial expenses, I'm sure they'll slash the prices quite a bit on that model. After that, they'll develop a cheaper model than that, and so on until OLED is standard on most keyboards.
What I'm hoping for in the long run is maybe an e-ink version within a year or two. E-ink should be perfect for these keyboards, and would reduce the amount of power they suck greatly. Just a shame e-ink didn't emerge properly until recently.
"I know that if I were an industry professional at this point in my life with the money to spend, I would have pre-ordered immediately. "
I am an industry professional, and I suppose I do have the money to spend, but I'm not going to preorder it. $1600 is a lot of money for a keyboard, no matter how much your annual income is. I have no doubt it would be worth it, but I just can't bring myself to drop that amount of money on a keyboard.
"I would have benefited greatly from this keyboard. It's not always easy to remember what the keyboard shortcuts for five hundred different functions are."
Just get yourself a logitech g15 for a hundred bucks and a pack of those little removeable dot label stickers for a buck twenty. There. I just saved you $1434.80
Do you really look at the keys when you type? how old are you?!
Eric Chiu: You really feel the need to make offensive remarks at people you don't even know? How old are YOU?
Actually, what I'm doing in my image- and video editing software is not actually typing. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of shortcut keys. Well, Photoshop has a LOT of them. So does all my other software. I can't help it if you don't use your computer for anything but writing stupid, mis-informed comments to people, that's your issue. Obviously not your only one.
With reprogrammable key graphics why do they need so many keys? I use a Happy Hacking Lite 2 keyboard with half as many keys. Just add a couple of mode keys and you could halve the cost.
How much did you idiots think a OLED keyboard would cost you? $70??? you guy's are dumb as hell.
If you're going to try to be condescending, at least try not to use terrible grammar.
Why is everyone complaining about the price?Theyre obviously not targeting people who wouldnt pay that sort of money, which is why theyre only making 400 of them.
Engadget better set one of these keyboards up for a worldwide competition!
Do you hear me Engadget?!!!
http://sendmeaeuro.awardspace.com
finally, i can have that 'any' key!
$1500 for an 'any' key is a bargain! or maybe one of those funny ones that the secretaries have that say 'panic.' what a riot!
I predict a new breed of virus that randomly shifts the key mappings around and/or a trojan that displays little advertisements on each key's OLED. :-)
i think this keyboard is lame. i bet one of it's clones will turn out to be a lot cooler, homebrew or not.
....I wish I had the kind of money that allow you to buy that keyboard... The only thing that bother me is the 5-year lifetime....
no word on the reliability of the keyboard? No beige? No standard curved keys like on a regular keyboard? Keys don't look like they can move down far, very laptop-like.
I'll try out a store demo before plonking down the cash ;)
Eric Chiu: You really feel the need to make offensive remarks at people you don't even know? How old are YOU?
Actually, what I'm doing in my image- and video editing software is not actually typing. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of shortcut keys. Well, Photoshop has a LOT of them. So does all my other software. I can't help it if you don't use your computer for anything but writing stupid, mis-informed comments to people, that's your issue. Obviously not your only one.
Who looks at their keyboard while typing or playing games? And how many hours will someone waste mapping every single key?
I can't wait to hear the first story of someone creating a $1536 paperweight by accidentally spilling a drink on their keyboard.
When they first released the promo on this keyboard, they mentioned that the price was going to be comparable to a decent cellphone. I assumed that meant somewhere around $500. What cellphone has ever cost $1536? I'll take some of whatever it is they are smoking!
Hahaha. You know what is even funnier? When Optimus vanishes and there are a bunch of $1500 keyboards without updated drivers preventing them to use the keyboard anyway.
Heck, it is bad enough getting a good working driver for an nVidia card on Vista.
Magnulus: Unfortunately I'm in tha creative industry.
Wacom Cintiq, trackballs and touch-screens are what we normally use. Not a stupid $1500 keyboard.
Btw... apparently you are not smart enough to understand why a short'cut key is called a short'cut key. It's 'short' because it saves your time, not costing more to find out which key is which based on its fancy logo.
Nice. Lebedev should also patent the amazing incrementing counter to launch.
Still with the insults, hm?
Not everyone can have as wonderful a memory as you. you may be able to remember every single shortcut in the five-ten different programs you use, but my pitiful brain can't. To me, that makes it worth it. You let stupid people like me waste their money on useless keyboards, and you can spend your money buying a machine to pat yourself on the back for being so clever.
ZING
BURN
Is it just me or are the OLED screens on this version MUCH SMALLER than in the original concepts?
@Argot
LOL! to bad everyone is not as quickwitted when responding to trolls. They would become extinct ;)