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Infinum Labs Phantom Lapboard Preview

Written by DM on Thursday, October 19 2006

I sat down with the President and CEO of Infinium Labs, Greg Koler, to check out the Phantom Lapboard. This product, as you may or may not have heard, is a keyboard/mouse peripheral combo that was cannibalized from the phantom console and packaged as a separate unit for sale. Now it looks like a piece of Phantom Hardware will actually make it to market - and a useful piece of hardware at that.

Keep in mind the unit I was given to demo was only a prototype unit. At first glance, the Phantom Lapboard is a sleek looking compact unit with black keys and a white plastic finish. The unit would look right at home in front of an Apple Macintosh with an iPod next to it. It has the sex appeal factor down pat, for sure. For those of you worried that the unit is not solid enough to sit on your lap firmly, fret no more. The lapboard is heavy. Not heavy enough to make use uncomfortable, but solid enough to not go slip-sliding all over the place.

This keyboard is designed with gamers in mind. The whole unit is wireless, so you can operate at up to 30 feet away from the receiver, although unofficial tests have put the range at somewhere around 50 feet. Why you would need to game 50 feet away from your screen, I cannot imagine, but it is nice to know you can if the need ever arose. The board itself operates in the 2.4GHz RF range, so interference is not likely to be a problem.

The layout of the keyboard itself is compact; do not expect an ergonomic wonder. This does not mean that using the board is uncomfortable in any way though, for the 20 minutes I got to play with it I did not experience any cramping or crowding. The best way to use the board itself is to put one of your legs across the other and tilt the unit at an angle. The keyboard part tilts up at about a 30 degree angle, and you literally use the space underneath the keyboard as your mousing surface. The keyboard part is set on a rotating hinge, and you can angle the keys arbitrarily. This also enables the Lapboard to be used by either left or right handed gamers. This is certainly one of the coolest features of the keyboard. I cannot tell you how many times I hear complaints from our left-handed brethren who game, complaining that there are no gaming accessories made for them. Well, now there is, and whether you use the board on the left or right, the operation is identical in every way.

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