This might be something I can use. I enjoyed the easily customizable softkeys on the Microsoft wireless keyboard I reviewed a month or so ago, and this is more powerful and less attached to a bulky keyboard with non-separated F-keys.

I’m pretty sure it’ll still cost north of, oh let’s say $400, but I think this is more practical than the actual full-LCD keyboard. It’ll probably be real around the beginning of 2009.

Art Lebedev’s Optimus Keyboard, famous for having little OLED screens on each key and never actually, you know, being purchased by anyone, was the defining meme of the 2006-2007 blogging season. Everyone was all excited for the product and when it finally launched everyone was like “Huh” and kept tapping at their iPhones.

Now AL is talking about the Tactus, a full-screen keyboard without buttons. As BoingBoingG points out, the best part of this futureboard is the fact that you’ll be able to see the underage girls in t.A.T.u. kissing.

No pricing, but do you care?

That garish Optimus keyboard that annoyed people with its price and lack of functionality will be re-born as the Optimus Popularis. That up there is the first mock-up of the keyboard, which is supposed to be “well under” $1,000. I know, feed your family, or buy a keyboard?

via Wired’s Gadget Lab

Ladies and germs, the next version of the Optimus keyboard! Dubbed the Optimus Popularis, it’s currently set to retail for “well below” $1,000. That’s some deal, $1K for a keyboard. Why buy food or pay rent when you can have a cool LED keyboard?

All the best stories come from random LiveJournals. Or something.

That’s right: the Optimus keyboard is on ThinkGeek for 1,600 freaking dollars. 1,600 freaking dollars. Seriously. It’s a keyboard with OLEDs in it. Make a good flat touchscreen interface for data entry a la Star Trek and leave this bugger to the dustbin of technological overreach.

(via BBG)

It’s out there, and it’s just as glossy and beautiful as you think. The keys are somewhat bigger than a normal keyboard, probably by 15% or so; they had a regular size one there for comparison. The screens were crisp, bright, responsive, and very high contrast.

It really does look like a $500 object, and if you can afford it, I’d say go for it. Their booth girls were nice and glossy too, definitely not local.

If you’ve spent any amount of time on tech sites like this one, you’ve surely heard of the Optimus keyboard. It uses OLEDs in place of “regular” keys. One minute a key open Safari the next it open Photoshop. Like the picture! According to a recent patent filed last March (but only revealed recently), Apple is working on a keyboard just like the Optimus.

Maybe with Apple R&D behind this type of keyboard it’ll actually see the light of day, unlike the as-yet vaporware Optimus.

New Apple Dynamic OLED Keyboard [hrmpf.com via Mac Rumors]

Hot on the heels of this year’s never-released Optimus Maximus superkeyboard, Optimus has taken the concept one step further with the Tactus keyboard. The idea is similar, but instead of customizable keycaps, the keys themselves are virtual.

Cool idea, but as anyone who’s tried to play Mario on an iPhone can attest, there’s a definite advantage to the tactile feedback real buttons (or, indeed, keys) give a user.

Optimus Tactus concept keyboard [Slippery Brick]

Art Lebedev Studios was more than happy to take preorders for the Optimus Maximus keyboard (that we all thought would never see the light of day) but seems to have neglected to make the device’s firmware work well enough to justify the high price tag. The method by which the firmware gets upgraded also needs to be overhauled.

Alas, she’s been delayed until the end of February. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but we’ve been waiting this long, what’s another couple of months, huh? One of us here will be sure to update you in mid-February when it gets delayed again. 

Optimus OLED keyboard pushed to February [MacNN]

We’ve long thought that the OLEDrific Optimus keyboard was vaporware. While we still haven’t seen anything more than a prototype, it now has a release date and price tag, both features vaporware rarely has. We’re happy to say we were wrong. We’re unhappy, though, about the fact that we can’t afford one, and you likely can’t, either.

The pre-order date was rumored to be May 12, but it’s actually May 20. We’d heard of it being affordable. That was wrong. If you’ve got a spare $1,500, and don’t mind sending it to a totally legit Russian company, you yourself can have a 100% customizable keyboard as early as December. Granted, the Optimus could have been more expensive. For the technology involved, it’s not a bad price. That being said, we’ll wait for the $200 Optinus Keyz Chinese knock-off.

Optimus Keyboard [Product Page, via Tekenstein]

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Thinkgeek got their hands on a final production sample of the Optimus Mini Three keyboard; the keyboard that only has three keys. Despite that, each key has an OLED display on it that you can use to show whatever you want. Examples are weather, how much free memory you have, how much your current CPU usage is, or a 3FPS webcam stream. It’s only Windows compatible for now, but Mac and Linux support is under development.

Ships mid-september for $159.

Optimus Mini Three Keyboard [Think Geek]