Minebea Cool Leaf touchscreen keyboard

[VERSI BAHASA MELAYU]
Bored with your present keyboard and keen to type on a touch-screen like what you do on a smartphone? Then you’ll be interested in a new keyboard called the Cool Leaf by Minebea, a Japanese multinational corporation and producer of machinery components and electronics devices.

The Cool Leaf measures 383 x 17 x 128 mm and has 108 keys with Japanese language support. It works with Windows (XP, Vista and Windows 7) and besides the initial Japanese language version, there are also English, German French and Italian versions available in the market. A Mac version is planned but no release date has been given.

The Cool Leaf, which connects to the computer via a USB cable, has a single board, thus enabling easy input surface cleaning and clean maintenance at any time. It also adopts an innovative design in which characters appear on its mirror panel, which uses a light guide plate-type backlight. The design is highly sophisticated, with functionality that has envisioned applications for medical treatment, home theatres, food manufacturing factories, clean rooms, etc.

Minebea says it will also release Cool Leaf input to other digital devices in the near future. These might include calculators, remote controls, etc. The price of the Cool Leaf is around US$471 (about RM1,400). [Rufaidah]