Sure, this little UMPC can fit in the palm of your hand and is only marginally larger than a lot of the larger smartphones being released these days, but this is no smartphone, this is a full on computer. It has an Intel Atom processor inside, a 40GB HDD, a 5” touchscreen, and so much more.
This keyboard almost scares me a little, I mean its certainly intimidating to look at. It has too much lighting, I mean there are all the lights and such on the bezel above the keys, and then there are 3 different colors of backlights that can be adjusted in brightness or even mixed in an color combination with the other two colors and then common gaming keys have their own special lighting as well as metal key caps.
This new keyboard from Kensington offers up a profile so thin its almost Mac worthy, except for the back area, but that’s where the magic happens. There is a small, short, hidden mini USB connector/cable hidden under a sliding door.
For anyone who has become a nut for green gadgets, this keyboard uses the power of humans to keep it alive. Merely plug yourself into the machine and it feeds off of you slowly for your entire life, then when you die, it feeds you to the young.
More specifically it’s a picture. We still know more or less diddly about the system specs. Also, we aren’t entirely sure this is a picture of the Eee Box, but judging from looks alone, it seems pretty accurate.
If it’s anything like the Eee notebooks it should be a pretty nice computer for an extremely low price. The only downside is that you’ll have to buy your own monitor, and possibly your own keyboard and mouse.
Sadly, after reading the description, I don’t believe you get all the gear that is set up on this thing, but you get the odd shaped desk, the monitor stand, the chair, and probably the two audio component boxes, but that seems to be about it. Now, if you work in the audio industry this is great news to you I am sure as I’ve seen some pictures of some audio studios and not only are they quite unattractive, but they also don’t generally look too terribly comfortable.
I am no computer historian but when the two computers that made up this beast are referred to as old and older, its pretty obvious this stuff is old. So some guy took a Spectrum ZX and a Toshiba Libretto 110 and smacked the two together.
Today Artemy himself said on his LiveJournal that they are moving forward with the idea behind the Optimus keyboard. But for seemingly sheer cost related issues they are passing on the 100+ OLED screens.
After silencing critics who never believed their OLED keyboard would reach prototype stage, never mind be on sale, Art Lebedev have announced their plans for the next generation of Optimus Mini. The original consisted of three keys, each with OLED displays; this version three will have one sensor divided into three zones, and will connect to a computer wirelessly via Bluetooth.
“We’re starting to work on a completely new design of Optimus mini. Main direction: to have something like ‘mini Tactus’. One small sensor display divided into three (maybe more) zones. On the top of our wish list is wireless capabilities (a lot of people use Optimus mini three to control Power Point presentations)” Art Lebedev blog
It’s a little bigger, but the concepts are the same. It has an 8 or 10 inch screen, a fair sized keyboard and is based on Intel’s Shelton platform with processors ranging from 1 to 1.5 Gigahertz.
SlashGear Japan
