Chicago (IL) - Russian design studio had some bad - or good, depending on your perspective - news over the weekend. The Optimus LED keyboard, which was announced to be made available for pre-order in a limited edition for $1200 a piece later this year - has been canceled. The good news here is that design studio perhaps figured out that $1200 for a b/w LED keyboard that was originally promised to come with color LED keys to cost as much as a good cellphone did not make much sense.

Today's news is that there won't be a black and white Optimus keyboard and that there will not be pre-orders on December 12 (and you won't have to wait until May to get this keyboard.) In the Optimus blog, Lebedev writes that he "will concentrate on making a color Optimus-103 with OLEDs." He indicated that pre-orders will be accepted as early as February 2007.

An open key of the Optimus keyboard. Image (c) Art Lebedev

There was no mention of the price of such a notebook. But given the fact that Lebedev talked about a $1200 b/w version for May and a sub-$1000 version of the keyboard for September 2007, there's a good chance that you will have to sell you car to be able to pre-order the Optimus 103.

Related article:
Optimus OLED keyboard to be priced at $1200