Roll up, roll up for the $1,500 keyboard

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 16 May 2007 at 13:08

It's not often a new keyboard attracts widespread attention - then again, it's not often a new keyboard costs $1,500.

However, the Russian company behind the much-hyped and long-awaited Optimus Maximus keyboard is about to start taking pre-orders from computer owners with more money than sense.

The Art Lebeved keyboard justifies its extravagant price tag by placing a small OLED display behind each of the 113 keys. Specially programmed software will be able to change the picture on each of the 48 x 48 pixel displays - allowing games to display customised shortcut layouts, for example.

The first batch of 200 keyboards will start to ship at the end of November, but wealthy typists who are keen to get their hands on the device can place pre-orders from May 20.

PC Pro's review of the three-key version of the keyboard earlier this year (see issue 148, p93) concluded that: 'At £115, it isn't cheap, but is still a diversion for the user who has everything.' We'll let you know as soon as we have review samples of its bigger brother.