Art Lebedev Studio, a design studio from Russia who develops innovative keyboards with keys that contain displays, said late Sunday that the first batch of its Optimus Maximus keyboards to be delivered in December, has been fully pre-ordered in twelve hours.
“The first 200 keyboards (to be shipped December, 1st) were pre-ordered in about 12 hours. When the section on Optimus Maximus opened, our site was almost down for the first 15 minutes. In nine hours there has been more than 100 000 unique visitors,” said Artemy Lebedev, the head of the design studio. 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 48×48 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 design studio hopes to obtain first fully functional engineering sample of the keyboard in late June and to be in position to ship the first batch, or 200 pieces, of Optimus Maximus starting 31st of November. The company promises that in December, 2007 and January, 2008 it will ship another 200 and 400 units, respectively.
Source: X-bit labs