$1,500 Optimus Maximus keyboard goes on sale

Percolating for almost three years now, the near-mythical morphing keyboard—armed with tiny OLEDs on every button that let you change the entire keyboard layout at will—is finally on sale, although it'll cost you an arm and a leg.

The aptly named—and oft-delayed—Optimus Maximus keyboard was supposed to start shipping last November, but it sounds like this aluminum-clad, 113-key gem needed a little more time in the oven.

So, what could possibly make a keyboard worth $1,500 (or $1,589, to be exact)? Well, each of the Optimus Maximus' keys has a little 36 by 36-pixel screen capable of displaying just about any character or icon (or even animated GIFs and QuickTime movies) that you can imagine.

The software that ships with the Maximus lets you customize your keyboard layouts to your heart's content (check out this video at ThinkGeek to see the thing in action), and of course, you can change layouts—be they for Quake, Photoshop, or Chinese—on the fly. So, no more need to memorize Control-key combos or shortcuts, although for the price of the Optimus Maximus, it might be cheaper to just buy a few cheap keyboards and paint icons on the keys by hand.

The bloggers at Gizmodo have been pounding on the Maximus for about three weeks now, and they've got a few key points for all you prospective buyers out there. Among them: the Maximus, they say, is as big and heavy as you'd expect; the "loud and clacky" keys aren't for everyday typing; and programming the custom keypad layouts takes time and patience. (Check out their in-depth review.)

So, anyone out there who'd seriously consider a $1,500 keyboard? Don't all raise your hands at once.

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Product page [ThinkGeek]