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Happy New Year... Starting WIth Hardware News |
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Written by Starfox
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Tuesday, 01 January 2008 18:00 |
Here we are in 2008 for which The Foxhole and all the staff offer you their best wishes. And let's begin this new year with a little curiosity from the company Lebedev (which are responsible for the Optimus keyboard which we presented almost two years ago, the first keyboard with each key containing a little OLED screen which is supposed to make of it the most customizable keyboard in the world).
Last week, Lebedev introduced a new keyboard concept, the Optimus Tactus.
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In the fact, this new concept is a keyboard featuring on all of its surface a LCD multi-touch screen (unlike common touch screens it can react to a combination of touches instead of just one). As you can see in one of the pictures below, the keyboard surface itself is completely flat. The goal to be achieved as for the first Optimus is to deliver a keyboard as customizable as it can be. You can have for example a US, French, German and Chinese keyboard all in one package, just switching between one and the other with a press on a virtual key.
The keyboard can also be customized to suit the specific needs of some applications. One can imagine being able to draw on the keyboard while working in Photoshop for example or to only display keys suited for a specific RPG instead of the usual QWERTY set. It can even display pictures and movies so it could be used as a multimedia control center as well. Possibilities seems to be endless.
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Alas, all is not fluffy and pinky in Lebedev's world. The first Optimus presented 2 years ago is still to be released after numerous delays -- it shouldn't be available before February -- and the announced $200-300 price tag from 2 years ago has jumped to $1500 which is not that surprising anyway since putting one OLED screen per key is expensive not matter how you look at it.
The Optimus Tactus offers a new perspective though since we can assume that it is much "cheaper" and less comlicated to put one big LCD screen in one keyboard rather than 103 small OLED ones. That should lower the final cost of the product because at $1500 for a keyboard I don't imagine a lot of people jumping on it. Furthermore, the Optimus Tactus concept seems to be far more customizable and useful than the single Optimus is.
Only drawback -- and there let's look at it from a gamer's point of view -- the complete lack of keys. A lot of gamers will probably be reluctant to use that kind of keyboard to play, at least in some games rather key "intensive" like FPS. Without marks, the probability to slip and miss a key at a crucial moment is overwhelming. Not to mention that gamers like the feeling of "hitting" a key instead of just touching it.
Since the Optimus Tactus is just a concept for now, no date of availability nor price were communicated (it is not even scheduled for mass production). Meanwhile if you're that eager to put your hands on a fully customizable keyboard, you can always wait for the $1500 Optimus that should be out this year.
And since we are on the subject of Multi-Touch screens, here's a special one for our dear Silver. Philips will be presenting at the CES 2008 a special 52'' LCD multi-touch screen just to prove that it can be done on a big scale. A picture was released with this announcement, a pretty boring one in itself, but I'm sure that Silver will appreciate the effort so I put it here. Happy New Year Silver!!
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