Remember a few weeks back when it came out that Microsoft had submitted a patent for a keyboard that looked suspiciously like the Optimus? Well, they’ve had a few made and, like the pressure-sensitive keyboard I saw at Microsoft Labs a long time back, they shipped a few to promising young students around the globe in an effort to save money on R&D give them a chance to work on non-traditional hardware.
I won’t spoil the usage scenarios they’ve cooked up, but the applications of the key displays and integrated touchscreen do seem pretty diverse. I was hoping for something like this with the Logitech G19, but the fact is that little LCD was extremely limited (and ran like 10 processes in the background). If Microsoft makes this into a real product, it could actually be incredibly useful for a lot of applications and games.