Please Don't Take My Stapler!

I love Technology. All kinds of technology. Fast cars like the BMW M5 or fuel efficient cars that I hope we get here in the US some day. There are many other things I dream about like sweet monitors, and really fast computers. But many of those are expensive toys that I may never afford or find practical.

Along the lines of impractical toys is the Optimus Maximus keyboard. It sounds like a transformer and in a way it is. What is amazing about this keyboard is that all the keys can be swapped out. In their place you can put replacement keys that have miniature OLED screens in them. Then you can use a piece of software to display images in those keys and to assign functions to those keys.. So you could have a key that was the Firefox logo that launched Firefox. Or you could find a picture of a flower and have that be your F key. The possibilities are limitless. There are some really practical uses for this keyboard, especially if you are bi-lingual. You could have your keyboard display in English, and then switch it to Greek, and then to Hebrew. How cool is that. The price? If you have to ask, you probably can't afford one. They start at around $600 and go up to over $1500 depending on how many OLED keys you want.

On a more practical note, there is another piece of of cool technology that is a little more reasonably priced. It is called the EeePc. It is a miniature laptop that has a 7 or 9 inch screen, weighs 2 pounds, and it has a flash based hard drive. It was originally released with a version of Linux as the only operating system option, but is now available with Windows XP. The bonus, it only costs $299. Now there is a toy that I may end up getting one of those days. Too bad the ole station wagon needs tires.

Back to dreaming.