$250 for a keyboard?!?!?!?!?!?!

[garuda_x]

i thnks that its time for one of us to have some keyboard hotkey stickers made. they used to make them for a few other companies... you can see them on 2pop.com for video editing apps.... but now they just sell the keyboards... $40 is an acceptable price, in my opinion. the keyboard that they stick the keys on is just a generic macally keyboard or something...

[Armando]

You guys don't do enough research. www.prokeys.com They sell the keyboards or just the inserts for older Apple keyboards for Pro Tools LE for quite a bit less. Check them out if this is what you need.

[Armando]

Sorry, it's www.powerkeys.com

[VanEdge]

$250 for a friggin' keyboard?
GIVE ME A BREAK.
if it's so damned expensive to make, than it's obviously a bad business decision to go through with. DUH. now if the thing has some mechanical advantage through midi or something, than i'd consider it. otherwise, if all that's different are the cute colored keys, then digi should be writing children's pop-up books instead of making digital audio products.
i could take a paint brush to my keyboard and do the same thing, for crying out loud!

[cnelson87]

A $250 Digi keyboard is really no surprise. They thought we would want to pay $33 for a colored faceplate sticker.
Did anyone actually buy one?

[bassmac]

Digi - Are you reading this?

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bassmac

[nz]

cnelson87,

I forgot about the colored faceplates!!! Another overpriced thing that MAYBE someone would buy if it was in a reasonable ballpark price ($10). Just for the "cute"/iMac factor.

I will bet they sold 7 of them total.

C'mon Digi...

[WestPhillySoulzition]

where ids this key board I wan to take a look at this joke.
I cant find it in the product contolers list


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Switchcraft

[Avid]

The Pro Tools Custom Keyboard is listed in the Products section under Peripherals in the All Products Index.

I'm not sure why you're even discussing this in the Digi 001 forum, much less getting upset about it. This is a custom keyboard intended for TDM systems, not home systems. From the dealer announcement Q and A:

Q: What about Pro Tools Windows users?
A: Pro Tools TDM on Windows currently works on NT 4.0 which does not have plug-and- play support for USB devices. This keyboard could work for dedicated Pro Tools LE users, but the key commands for LE are just a subset of all the custom keys on this keyboard. Also, Windows LE users will find that a couple of important control keys are moved from their standard positions, to equivalent Macintosh control key locations.

Because Pro Tools LE does not contain the full set of TDM keyboard shortcuts, this keyboard is far more useful on a TDM system than an LE system.

As far as pricing in general:
The reality of custom manufacturing goods in limited quantities is that they cost way more than items that are mass produced. The custom 001 faceplates, for instance, (which are the entire faceplate, not stickers) were created specifically because of requests by 001 users. These have been provided at very close to our cost to custom manufacture limited quantities of the different colored faceplates. If you can do it cheaper, by all means go ahead. As it is, providing this option to users will either lose money or take a long time to break even, and in all likelihood will never be a profitable item. You asked, we made them available. Buy them or don't, but it's wrong to jump to the conclusion that somehow we're trying to gouge the customer. As I've explained, we've taken at the very least a short-term loss to try and fulfill a request from users.

The Pro Tools Custom Keyboard is similarly a request from a specific group of users, that hopefully will be glad that we have provided a product that fulfills that request. Again, if this is not a product for you, then you shouldn't buy it. If on the other hand you have a Pro Tools TDM studio and this keyboard speeds up your workflow, then it can quite literally pay for itself in a matter of days.

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Bruce Paine
Digidesign

[KamaSutra77]

My girl works in plastics molding and finishing. Its dime a dozen work. I hope Digi gets a better deal than that for thier effort. it would seem to make more sense in a way to partner with a keyboard maunufacturer to get the keys made, seems simple anyways! LOL I know its not though.