Optimus Keyboard Starts Shipping

Tom's Hardware is reporting that the Optimus keyboard that everyone was so anxious for (although maybe less so when they saw the price tag) started shipping this week. "According to an announcement made on the Optimus project blog, keyboards are now shipping to customers who pre-ordered the $1564 keyboard nine months ago. Keyboards with passive keys are delayed and will be shipping in about a month, the manufacturer said. [...] Earlier this month, one of the first Optimus Maximus keyboards was sold for $2750 on Ebay." Engadget even got the chance to test one of these expensive toys out.

No thanks

[MonorailCat]

according to Engadget, not only is it wildly expensive, but it's painful to type on. I wish form followed function a little more often in the gadget world.

Design flaws

[gilesjuk]

The DC supply plugs into the back of the keyboard, ugly for such a otherwise expensive and well designed keyboard.

Why couldn't they have a split end on the keyboard cable with the DC input and USB connections, that way you would have no DC cable in sight.

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[account_deleted]

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Optimus fails it.

[TripMaster Monkey]

From the Engadget article:

Okay, why does typing on the Optimus suck, you ask? Well, although the keyboard uses mechanical switches and a lot of high quality components (evident when we pulled off some keys), and there is some clicky tactility to keypresses, as a whole it just requires way too much force to depress keys. And the larger the key, the more force is required, so enter is easier than space, but harder than tab. Let's put it this way, we sit around and type all day long and this thing wore us out in about 30 seconds to a minute. Carpal sufferers, beware.

So, the keyboard is painfully inadequate at doing the one thing keyboards are suppodes to be doing: data input. Kinda like a solid gold mouse that won't track, or a 80-inch monitor that won't display better than 800x600. Pretty pointless.

Stupid

[jointm1k]

This thing is the dumbest thing ever. Even more useless than the display on the G15 gaming keyboard. Who fricking watches the keys while typing or gaming?! And according to the review typing sucks on this keyboard. WTF? A keyboard that does not allow you to type properly has no reason to exist. And what looney pays $2750 for it?

Made by idiots, for idiots.

Flame on!

Re:No thanks

[ThreeGigs]

Well, what did you expect? The keys are displays, and have to weigh a lot more than a plain piece of plastic. Thus need stronger springs to return them to up position, a stronger push to depress them, and stiffer suspension to handle the extra force.

In no way would I expect something like this to be 'comfortable' to type on, no matter who makes it.

pwned keyboards coming soon...

[Will the Chill]

Since these things appear to be mostly geared toward Windows users (yes, I know, some Mac too) it's only a matter of time before somebody releases as script-kiddy utility for pwning your friends' and enemies' keyboard OLEDs.

I can see it now. Grandma is surfing for recipes and all of a sudden her nice new keyboards starts showing all sorts of inappropriate text and images.

And plus apparently it sucks as a keyboard.

-WtC

*** $!g +yP3d 0n 0p+!^^u$ k3Yb0@Rd ***

We don't need no stinkin title!

[StikyPad]

Unfortunately, the G-15 does exactly what the Optimus will be doing 99.9% of the time, for $1450 less.

Also there's the Catch-22 that no geek actually looks at the keyboard whilst typing, so the demographic most likely to think it's cool is also the least likely to need it.

Early buyers must be pissed

[Firehed]

...since the price has apparently dropped from $1500+ to "only" $462, according to Lebedev's website. And as a $600 iPhone owner, I thought Apple was bad. I suppose at that price I could almost give it serious consideration, but I think I'll wait it out for v2.0.

Re:No thanks

[prxp]

Great! A keyboard that is no good for typing! How much more can they innovate?

Re:Early buyers must be pissed

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to read better, bud. The $462 price is for the keyboard with ONE programmable button.

Re:Review summary

[gnick]

Actually, I can think of at least a couple of applications for a keyboard like this where additional key resistance wouldn't be a big deal:

* A public terminal at the U.N. or other international agency. You wouldn't expect (or encourage) long use-times at public terminals and venues like the U.N. could really make use of a keyboard that can change character sets quickly and easily.

* Gaming. Now, most of my gaming experience is with FPSs and real-time strategy, but the keyboard use (although important) was much slower than coding, e-mailing, or posting to /. . And, graphical keys could be a real plus - Especially if you regularly switch back and forth between several games

Re:Review summary

[SatanicPuppy]

For someone with a musical background, who may have the subtlety of touch required, that would be fine. I personally prefer something a bit less responsive, as I have a tendency to slide my fingers across the keyboard which leads to a lot of typos on more responsive keyboards.

If I'm doing a lot of typing I prefer a heavier keyboard; I find accuracy and action of the keyboard more than compensate for the increased "work" of typing.

That being said, I can't imagine paying for a keyboard with the LED picture keys. That makes no sense at all to me. To get any kind of speed out of typing, you have to NOT look at the keys, not be forever distracted by the "Ooooooo shiny!" keys.

hunt and peckers??

[Quadraginta]

If you have to look at the keys to figure out which finger to press down, you're typing way, way, way too slowly to be getting serious work done. You might as well use a mouse and an on-screen keyboard, I'd think.

Re:Review summary

[sm62704]

$1564 keyboard

-Still some quirks to work out with Macs
-Requires extra strength for keypresses, so unsuitable for typing more than a few minutes.

Erm, uh, the summary gives no indication whatever why this sucker costs more than a new computer. Is the damned thing made of gold and diamond studded?

Some people have too many dollars and no sense.

Re:Stupid

[poot_rootbeer]

Who fricking watches the keys while typing or gaming?!

I know a WHOLE LOT of hunt-and-peck typists. Doesn't everybody?

The idea of having a customizable display on each key is a sound one. A modern keyboard has five or six different shift keys, but at most two or three different glyphs on each keycap. A user can only discover other keyboard behaviors from cues provided away from the keyboard (looking at shortcut hints in menus, RTFM, etc.).

But if the stuff printed on each key changed when you press the Ctrl key? The user will be exposed to so much more functionality! And that's not even mentioning Function keys, or modal software (like vi), or...

The decisions to use high-resolution full color OLEDs on each key, and require a external power source beyond USB's +5v, and cost twice as much as the computer it's hooked up to, and to make it suck at being a keyboard are all less defensible.

If they had made a keyboard that felt like a typical $20 OEM keyboard but had a 16x16 monochromatic LCD built into each key, and cost $100, I'd own one for each computer I use regularly.

Re:Design flaws

[tknd]

I think there are more serious flaws with this "customizable display on key" concept. One issue is if the keys are dynamic (they change function) then in order for the user to recognize the function of the key, the user has to look at his keyboard. Many typists no longer look at the keyboard when they're typing and even if they do, they don't "hunt" for keys. People can do this and type fast because they have built the necessary mapping in their brain to not have to process things like finding where each key is. So looking at your keyboard can actually hinder your performance if the functions are not consistent or change depending on the inputs.

Another problem is most people don't naturally use the keyboard. They use a pointing device that corresponds to the screen. So for example a touch screen is a pretty dead simple device to use. You can go to the movie theatre and walk up to an automated ticket machine to purchase your ticket without having seen the interface ever before because it is a touch screen and you simply select the choices you want. Now we have the optimus keyboard which has move the display device to the input device rather than move the input device to the display (touch screen). So the assumption here is that people will actually interact with their keyboard as if it were a display device which I honestly don't think it possible. For example how many times have people tried typing on the number pad only to realize that numlock was on despite the numlock light obviously being off. In the case of the optimus, that may not be an issue if the user at least looks at the keys (you can change the labels on the number pad keys), but again I have to stop to look at the keyboard rather than keep my eyes on the screen.

One last thing that is a little off is the use of color OLED displays rather than something simpler or cheaper. Is there a reason why the keys need to display at 10fps and 65k colors? Am I going to be watching porn on my keyboard or something? Why not use something like epaper or a single color display. Even though it is monochrome, 99% of the need is accomplished: the need to display a different label on the key.

I honestly think there are better solutions out there that come closer to meeting the actual usability needs (example the ergodex). Furthermore I think there is still room for other innovations in input devices that are immediately useful, but not so obvious to discover. One of those innovations is the mouse wheel--incredibly useful but not so obvious to think of. Now take away a mouse wheel from a user and they will most likely get annoyed.

Re:Stupid

[Reapy]

I agree, G15 is great when a game supports it. My two favorite uses of it include the clock for when I'm gaming so I can see that I actually need to get to bed on time (No clock on the wall in pc room) and the support for fraps so I can check my fps all the time without disturbing the picture.

There are even some miranda-im plug ins that show what people are chatting to you (so you can view while gaming) and I believe there is a teamspeak plug in that will show who is currently talking.

There are just a ton of little nifty features that fit perfectly into the need for info to view while glancing away from the screen for a moment, without taking up any real estate on screen. The macro support on the keyboard is also fantastic. All around the g15 is a great product for a gamer.

Not MORE resistence.... heavy is bad, old or new.

[raehl]

My computer is less than a year old. My keyboard is 15 years old. It's so old I have an AT->PS2->USB adapter just to get it to work with my present computer.

You have to be careful when talking about resistance. Old skool keyboards are considered good because there is a significant difference in force from before the key has activated to after it has been activated. So if you just nudge a key, it has some firm resistance, then when it clicks, it has almost no resistance at all (at least until you hit bottom). But since the portion of the key press where resistance is firm is so short, it still doesn't take much effort to press keys, and it's also very easy to tell by touch whether or not you were successful in a key activation.

The problem with most modern keyboards is they're light, AND they're light for the whole press - so it's very easy to accidentally press a key to the point that it moves, and then very hard to tell whether it moved far enough that you got a keypress you didn't want. Now, if instead of a modern LIGHT keyboard you just have a modern HEAVY keyboard (more resistance), it may be harder to accidentally press a key, but you still don't have good tactile feedback as to whether you've actually pressed a key or not (you've traded not knowing if you accidentally pressed a key for not knowing if you successfully pressed one) and have just made your fingers work harder.

The trick is a short, firm press to activation, then a click to long light press after that.

It's not meant for typists!

[ErkDemon]

Yeah, but it's not meant for typing on, is it? 'Cos the people who spend so much time typing on a keyboard that they can consider blowing fifteen hundred bucks on one ... are already going to know where all the keys are.

No, this is for people doing video editing or music production or other multimedia editing, where you might easily have a couple of hundred functions tucked away behind various Ctrl-Shift-Alt key combinations, and which change depending on which edit screen you're in, or which function key you just pressed. If you're in an audio editor, and you mark out a section of audio, there might easily be forty or fifty different functions that you might want to apply to that block: cut/copy/paste/save-as-file/silence/optimise/filter/replace/retune/add-to-library ... the list goes on and on (when I was prototyping an all-out audio editor once, I think I had about sixty different region-edit functions).

If you're using one of these programs, the main function of the keyboard isn't inputting text, it's launching functions and actions by key-command shortcut so that the user doesn't have to dig through menus and dialog boxes. And of course, the big problem is that although a keyboard has enough buttons to launch all these functions, they aren't written on the keys, and even if you buy a custom keyboard for something like Logic (with the commands printed on the key-caps), you don't have context-sensitivity or proper customisability, and if the company adds or changes key-commands on a new software update, you're left behind. If you use a couple of different audio editing apps and a couple of video editors, plus a few other bits of specialist software, plus photoshop, and you can't face the idea of ordering seven different custom keyboards and finding some way to switch between them, then this is probably a very nice gadget for a cramped pre-production studio.

Keep a cheap generic keyboard tucked away under the desk for those times that you need to do some serious typing.