Just ten days after the first design sketches of the new Art. Lebedev Studio keyboard appeared online, a more good looking 3D prototype is now available for your viewing pleasure. Set to abandon the OLED keys used in Optimus Maximus, Optimus Popularis is little short on details. For now the keyboard is in very early stage of development. We only know that it will be compatible with both Mac OS X and Windows systems, and is likely to feature a sub-$1000 price.

Art. Lebedev Studio, creator of the Optimus Maximus OLED keyboard, informed that it has started working on a completely new design of Optimus mini, their first portable OLED keyboard with three keys. The new mini 3.0 will feature one small sensor display divided into three (maybe more) zones. It may also have wireless capabilities, but don't count on that for now since it's writen in the wish list. Pictures of the new project will be available soon. Meanwhile you can read our review of the old Optimus mini.

Art. Lebedev Studio today prototyped a keyboard design that could stand in as a completely flexible display. The Optimus Tactus would improve on the yet to be shipped Maximus keyboard with touch input. Instead of an OLED screen built into every key, the Tactus would use one giant touchscreen that would not only permit keys to change in size and function, but would also allow features such as video playback overlay. As a matter of fact the release date for Tactus is set to be 01.01.2008, but the keyboard is still considered a concept and may not be released ever.

Art. Lebedev Studio has announced an official shipment date for its Optimus Maximus OLED-based keyboard, and an official box design has surfaced after just one model appeared on display at the Wired Store in SoHo, New York. Readers not familiar with the project must know that every key of the Optimus Maximus OLED keyboard is a stand-alone 65k colors display showing the function it is currently associated with. Optimus is equally good for any keyboard layouts-Cyrillic, Ancient Greek, Georgian, Arabic, Quenya, hiragana-and so on to infinity: notes, numerals, special symbols, HTML codes, math functions, images etc. It will cost approximately $1600 when it is officially released. The keyboard will ship with a 512MB flash card for storing key sets, which can be swapped or carried around to other Optimus keyboards. Pre-orders for the luxury keyboard will allegedly begin on December 12th.

If you are up for it - or better if your wallet is - you may pre-order the Optimus Maximus keyboard from the Art. Lebedev website, starting at 3PM Moscow time on Sunday May 20th. There will be very limited quantities available, with only 400 pieces being produced in 2007.

It seems that everything is shaping up nicely with the OLED based keyboard. The company blog mentiones a planned November 30th release date. The price also get pinned down at US$ 1564. That is a tad bit more than we were told at CeBIT (US$ 1490). If you want that Optimus Maximus, you better keep your eyes peeled on their website. Only 200 pieces will be constructed monthly, with a ramp to 400 units in January. A countdown to preorder will be placed on the Art. Lebedev website today or tomorrow.

Here are some good and some bad news about the ultimate Optimus keyboard project, unveiled directly from Artemy Lebedev and Dimitry Tosy right after the CeBIT in Hannover started. I'll begin with the bad news. First the expected $1,200 price is now $1,490(cough). Second, the complete Optimus keyboard isn't being shown at CeBIT, just a few screenshots. Now the good news. The keyboard is now called Optimus Maximus and there will be OLED keys after all with an expected life span of only 5 years. Each 32 x 32 resolution OLED will remain stationary. Pre-orders of the unseen keyboard start in April with delivery in November/December 2007.

Newlaunches.com has pictured the configurator for Art Lebedev's Optimus-103 keyboard. The Optimus is supposed to be a revolutionary keyboard, in that each key will have its own LCD, which will then be configurable through software. There will be endless possibilities, you will be able to fully customize the characters on the keyboard to the current software you are using.

The keyboard has been in development for quite a long time, and hopefully this is a sign that it will be available for purchase soon.

I might disappoint a lot of our readers with this news. According to the Optimus project official blog, the Optimus 103 keyboard will be available for preorder on December 12 and will cost US$1200. Only 103 pre-orders will be accepted with a shipping date about May 2007. Later Optimus will start accepting more pre-orders at sub-1000 price with a shipping date around September 2007. In addition to its stunning price, the Optimus 103 will use FSTN displays with a polarizer for its keys. In other words it will use black and white displays, color ones will come later at a greater price.

Everyone knows about the Optimus keyboard and the Optimus Mini Three. Art Lebedev Studio has now unveiled their newest strike of genius - the Optimus Upravlator. Keeping with the theme of LCD buttons you actually get 12 of them this time. There are a lot of possible uses for this. The monitor behind the buttons is 10.4 inches large and features a resolution of 640x480. Each button is "4-way" with a fifth center button. The unit should be available in Q2 2007.

The Mini Three, designed by Studio Lebedev, is a 3 button panel which acts like a keyboard. Each button is an OLED screen, which adapts to what the user requires. For example, you can program the keyboard to have buttons for Load, Save and Exit while playing HL2, you can have it show PC performance - basically anything your heart desires.

This marvel has been postponed - initially, it was meant to be shipped May 15th, 2006, the date is now changed to June 15th, 2006.

The studio is also developing a "full-blown" keyboard with OLED screens. Studio Lebedev hopes to have a "hands on a sample before year-end".

The Optimus keybord is coming 2/1/06. This keyboard's keys are OLED so for lets say Quake the key W says Forward. It is a really cool keyboard with many uses and now you don't have to have multiple keyboards for mutliple languages.