X-bit labs

Art Lebedev Starts to Ship Final Optimus Maximus Keyboards.

Category: Multimedia

by Anton Shilov

[ 02/21/2008 | 08:43 PM ]

After substantial delays, Art Lebedev, a leading design studio from the Russian Federation, said it had started to ship final versions of its much-discussed Optimus Maximus keyboard. Following years of waiting, the $1564-worth keyboard is set to ve delivered to end-users in days.

“We [are] beginning to ship Optimus Maximus keyboards to those who ordered it last year. At the same time, first versions of Optimus Configurator software for Mac and PC are available at [our web-site],” said Artemy Lebedev, the head of the design studio.

Art Lebedev delayed shipments of its famous Optimus Maximus keyboard last year due to software issues. Fortunately, by now the company feels that the software is in commercial condition and is ready for shipments.

Optimus Maximus is a full-sized 113-keys keyboard with colour OLED screens located inside each key. The screens are 10.1mm² large and have 48x48 pixels resolution, according to its developers. Specially designed software will be able to change images on the colour screens depending on the program running. The device costs $1564.

More affordable versions of the keyboard are projected to feature lower amount of keys with integrated OLED screens, which will be substituted with typical keys with imprinted letters, numbers or symbols on them. Unfortunately, those devices are set to be postponed.

“Those who bought a version with passive keys will get their keyboards in a month (and our apologies sooner than that). It turned out that we have to produce inner parts of the passive keys again – what we have now does not meet our quality standard,” Mr. Lebedev said.

Considerably behind the schedule, Art Lebedev Optimus Maximus keyboard emerges finally as a commercial product.