14 DAY TRIAL // From time to time, a company will announce a product but will not exactly bring it to market in an overly timely fashion, and while some may have believed Optimus to have given up on the Popularis, it seems to only be needing some more time to finish it.
When announcing plans for a new type of product, IT players often provide the web with teasing photos or previews.
This, of course, was the case with the more or less unusual endeavor that Optimus, a Russian keyboard specialist, took last year.
The so-called Optimus Popularis was conceived as a more accessible, price-wise, version of the Maximus and has been reportedly delayed until later this year.
The overall concept is for the keys themselves to be small displays instead of buttons, all of them being fully customizable.
This will allow one to personalize the key layout according to whatever needs or preferences they may have.
Fortunately, the same outfit decided to put together a consolation prize of sorts, in the shape of the Optimus mini Six.
This product won't be a keyboard, per se, but more of a complement or supplement for one such peripheral.
It is a double version of the Mini Three and uses the same display technology as the Popularis itself.
That said, they no longer employ OLED panels, using liquid crystal display technology instead, as it can fit higher resolutions, like 64 x 64 screens into physically smaller keys.
There is no way of knowing just how much something of this sort will cost, but it will surely be much less than the Popularis itself, which hovers around the $1,000 mark.
Sales should start this year sooner or later, though no exact date was given except the reassurance that it will be later this year and not in 2012 or beyond.