Are you picky about your keyboard? I’m the type of user who needs a keyboard that *clicks*. If it doesn’t *click*, the tiny brains in my finger tips don’t believe they’ve done their job, and the brains in my eyeballs have to go to the page to see what I’ve actually typed. Also, don’t be moving the Del key on me. You do that and your keyboard becomes a dust-catcher in my closet.

But aside from that, I’m happy.

Or at least I was until I saw the Mother-of-All-Keyboards at CES.

It won’t be available from resellers until March, but you’re getting the word now because I like you. It’s called the Optimus Maximus keyboard and you can only buy it if you speak Latin. No, that’s not true. You can only buy it if you are willing to spend $1,500.

That’s right. That new car,. The Nano, from Tata Motors in India is priced at only $1,000 more than this keyboard, which comes from Art Lebedev Studio in Moscow, Russia.

Now, I know that everybody in Russia is rolling in the dough. You just have to look at the luxurious hats Russians wear to realize that. But this keyboard is truly for the Paris Hiltons of the world. Or it would be if only Paris Hilton were more of a geek.

So why is this keyboard so pricey? Because every single key on it is a stand-alone display. Imagine a tiny monitor that shows exactly what function the key is dedicated to. Looking for a way to integrate a little Cyrillic or Ancient Greek into your everyday blogging? Dedicate some of those keys to the more obscure layouts you need to use. That also includes HTML code, math functions, images — anything you can configure in a 48×48 pixel space through the keyboard’s software.

It runs on Windows XP and Vista. If you’re a Mac user, don’t feel left out. It’ll run with Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher. Just needs a USB port to plug in.

I was going to take my family on a special vacation this year. But maybe those funds will have to be diverted to office supplies instead… Sorry, son.

Posted on January 15th, 2008 by dian