Coolest. Keyboard. Ever!

Alex · 01-12-2006, 11:51 AM

Actually, OLED not LED, but that's not an important difference for most people.

Lebedev is an interesting industrial design firm, but until they actually announce a manufacturer for this keyboard I'm keeping it filed in the vaporware category, though I'm sure someone will produce somehting like this eventually (and there are already a few do-it-yourself solutions out there).

But I can't imagine that even if it were really cheap that I'd have much use for it. I touchtype very fast, I never look at my keyboard. Years ago when I had reason to type in Cyrillic I had a macro that reprogrammed the keys on my keyboard and then I touchtyped on that. Visual queues for what key I'm pressing serve no function.

You can already do all the reprogramming of keyboards this offers on standard keyboards, it is just the changeable pictures that's new. If you're a person who goes through and customizes all the icons on your desktop then I can see this being neat, but if you're like me and it doesn't matter what the icon is just so long as I instantly know where it is (the Windows recycle bin icon is visually distinctive but if someone moves it from the lower right corner of the desktop then I flail about like a two-year-old for a couple seconds until I find it again).

Ergonomically, this thing looks bad as well (though they promise that a later version will be ergonomic). As shown in the Photoshop drawings (and those are what you're looking at, not even a manufactured prototype) all the keys are flat-surfaced and the keyboard seems to be set at a fixed angle. Finally, if one of the cooler things about it is instant visual conversion to other languages, they need to add some extra keys in the main typing area since the most common alternative languages have more letters in their alphabet than standard English.

So I'm more in Steve's camp. It's technologically cool that it can be done (whether it can be done for less than $500 seems in doubt) but it doesn't seem useful except in very specialized circumstances.

01-12-2006, 11:51 AM	#21
Alex . Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 13,354	Actually, OLED not LED, but that's not an important difference for most people. Lebedev is an interesting industrial design firm, but until they actually announce a manufacturer for this keyboard I'm keeping it filed in the vaporware category, though I'm sure someone will produce somehting like this eventually (and there are already a few do-it-yourself solutions out there). But I can't imagine that even if it were really cheap that I'd have much use for it. I touchtype very fast, I never look at my keyboard. Years ago when I had reason to type in Cyrillic I had a macro that reprogrammed the keys on my keyboard and then I touchtyped on that. Visual queues for what key I'm pressing serve no function. You can already do all the reprogramming of keyboards this offers on standard keyboards, it is just the changeable pictures that's new. If you're a person who goes through and customizes all the icons on your desktop then I can see this being neat, but if you're like me and it doesn't matter what the icon is just so long as I instantly know where it is (the Windows recycle bin icon is visually distinctive but if someone moves it from the lower right corner of the desktop then I flail about like a two-year-old for a couple seconds until I find it again). Ergonomically, this thing looks bad as well (though they promise that a later version will be ergonomic). As shown in the Photoshop drawings (and those are what you're looking at, not even a manufactured prototype) all the keys are flat-surfaced and the keyboard seems to be set at a fixed angle. Finally, if one of the cooler things about it is instant visual conversion to other languages, they need to add some extra keys in the main typing area since the most common alternative languages have more letters in their alphabet than standard English. So I'm more in Steve's camp. It's technologically cool that it can be done (whether it can be done for less than $500 seems in doubt) but it doesn't seem useful except in very specialized circumstances.
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