

ThinkGeek now selling Optimus Maximus Keyboard (113 LCD screen keys) - JayNeely
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/9836/

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boucher
Engadget review: [http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/22/optimus-maximus-at-
long-l...](http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/22/optimus-maximus-at-long-last-we-
bring-one-home-to-test/)

Take away: "Typing on it, well, sucks."

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angstrom
Interesting. Any word on when they'll add hydraulics?

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calvin
While I think the Optimus Maximus is a fantastic looking product, I've got to
ask who has the money for this? Does anybody here own it yet or plan on
purchasing it?

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RK
I've got to assume that something like this is at the level of a 1980's
handheld cell phone with regards to price at the moment (and maybe tech?).

And just like the 80's cell phone, the only people I've heard online (as a
group) considering these keyboards have been doctors (specifically
radiologists and radiation oncologists). Basically they are people with a)
lots of cash and b) a great need for complicated software and c) little time
and patience to learn useful things like keyboard shortcuts, they way
programmers,etc would.

Now I just wonder if we'll see drug dealers picking these up...

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simianstyle
You know I used to want this keyboard a lot, but now I would happily settle
for one of those super thin aluminum mac ones. This isn't quite in vogue
anymore.

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cglee
I have a thin mac keyboard. If you want to stare at your keyboard all day,
it's mind-blowing awesome. For typing and coding, not so much.

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brent
That's interesting. I tested about 30 keyboards before I settled on it. The
decision was almost entirely feel and I love it. I type/code ~6 hours a day on
it.

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daniel-cussen
Most geeks don't look at their keyboards.

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rms
Accept no substitutes:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_Keyboard>

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phaedrus
Thanks for the link! I'd always just called them "clicky keyboards" and
wondered why you could never find them anymore...

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rms
Just don't spill water on them. I destroyed my last one with a wayward cup of
water and have been using a crap logitech one since.

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vikram
The shape and the size of the keys is more important that what is displayed on
them.

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jrockway
Not if you're a design student. Nobody _uses_ things developed in design
school, they're only for being looked at. (According to my friend in design
school, they fail if they don't develop something that "looks different".
Apparently none of them have ever read Norman.)

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wanorris
See -- there are good reasons to take all that money from venture capitalists!
;-)

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acangiano
The current price is ridiculous. Sell it for $100 and people will actually buy
it.

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Hexstream
That's right, the _current_ price is ridiculous. But I think given the
tremendous advantages to such a technology (my keyboards hardly ever displayed
the "right" labels out of the box), we can expect it to become a commodity in
the near future (10-15 years?).

Now, I think there's a little problem with this keyboard... looking up at your
keys all the time is not the most productive way to use a keyboard. They
market it to geeks, yet I think consumers would find it useful the most.

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abstractbill
I prefer to think in 10-15 years we won't use keyboards (but I guess I
wouldn't bet on it - they've been surprisingly hard to replace).

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SamReidHughes
What would we be using instead?

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jfoutz
hand tracking, eye tracking and speech recognition are coming on strong with
all the power todays computers have.

I don't think the keyboard will ever go away, but a lot of things will be way
faster just with hand signals, and subvocalization dictation.

~~~
jrockway
I think I disagree. I can't imagine writing code or a book with voice
recognition, even assuming 100% accuracy. The initial dictation isn't the hard
part, it's editing that's hard. What commands will we use? "Change that last
foo to bar?" That still seems pretty tedious.

I could do without the mouse, though. I would rather press a link with my
finger than move my hand all the way over to the mouse, then point, then
click.

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tokipin
clearly we need some sort of voice versions of vim and emacs

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jrockway
Even then, it's still faster to press the keys for moving around. But maybe
your editor could be in command mode by default, and you could import words by
speaking. That might be cool.

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tlrobinson
Rather than having a hundred little tiny LCDs, they should have figured out a
way to have one large display and some sort of ingenious key assembly/lens
system. Seems it would be more economical.

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mlinsey
I'm hard enough on my keyboards that I would be really scared of using this.

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jmzachary
Let me know how it works. I can't afford that.

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samwise
you could use a 7inch touch screen LCD for way less, and have even greater
control

