New M$ keyboard. Part Optimus Maximus

[Oneslowz28]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojusRO38Tdc&feature=player_embedded

Its not for sale yet but looks pretty cool.

[d_stilgar]

I don't think it will ever be for sale the way it is now, but I really do love the idea. No patent violation there. I wish the keys had less black space between them though. The Optimus Maximus concept looked so cool and then the real one sucked so bad. This could really cool if some company were to do it right.

[Konrad]

Well, the Optimus costs at least $1000 more than this one, and does a lot less.

I like the idea of having a dedicated touch display for toolbars, ribbons, that sort of stuff. Declutters the main display and lets the user keep focus in one area when navigating through key shortcuts and stuff. Keep the main display for wysiwig, keyboard display for user controls. Much more useful than the bling screens on G15/G19 keybs.

I like the idea of the keys reconfiguring their layout, font, even pretty little icons. Having the keyboard constantly reorganizing itself might be very annoying though, especially once some bloody malware dooms you by hijacking your keyboard.

I just hope MS doesn't make this thing utterly Windows dependent or otherwise screw it up.

[x88x]

So, this is basically just a touchpanel LCD sitting where the keyboard normally would, yes? Call me oldfashioned, but I don't see that working very well. As someone who uses the keyboard for probably at least ~75% of his input, and who is ...rather hard on keyboards, I would be much more worried about what my keyboard looks like and more concerned about how it feels to use and how durable the 'keys' are. Anyone else out there who would be afraid that they would break a glass touchscreen if they were typing on it all day? ..yeah.. I'd rather spend all day staring at my monitor with big pictures and text, not my keyboard, trying to figure out what the tiny little pictures mean. Better yet, just learn how to use the damn program! Then you won't need to have the computer hold your hand the whole way! :P

..ok, rant's over, I'mma go sleep now. :P

[Konrad]

Touchscreens on iPhones/etc are fairly durable. They seem to be able to endure some abuse, but I share your lack of confidence in how they'd fare when exposed to pwnage gaming frenzy. Or being hauled around LAN events. Or surviving a can of soda.

This keyboard (maligned as the "Optimus Minimus" in some communities) looks puny. Displays (and touchgrids) are always getting cheaper, but it'd probably be fairly costly to make a "full-size" keyboard this way.

It appears to actually have physical keys, not just images of keys on a display. Not sure how that works. Not sure how that rates against conventional keyswitches.

The data being displayed either has to be stored in an advanced keyboard controller or transferred "real-time" across the (USB) interface. It'd be kinda cool if the keyboard could be used to store/run applications, pack removable flash ports, or even operate semi-independantly (like a wimpy laptop). I expect that whatever the implementation is, it'll pack a heavy software hit on the (probably Windows-only) OS.