Turn Your PC Into A Tablet

Odkin writes "Geekstreet.ca has a story on a new concept invented by Philips called Detachable Monitor. It's an LCD with a touch screen that connects to your PC via 802.11b. I found this article in German with some nice hi-res pictures and there's also a link at Philips' homepage. "

Comments

That's not a new concept

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, people have been using devices like that for years. Any tablet PC or handheld with something like X11, RDP, or VNC will do.

Also, Microsoft has been the driving force behind making this concept popular this year (Mira).

Let's just hope that the term "invent" won't translate into yet more bogus patents on old technology.

protocol & usefulness

[bromoseltzer]

The question is what is the link protocol and what's in the "remote display". They're not sending raw video (or X11) over WiFi, and the box has the ability to show jpegs locally. Hopefully it's not running Windows, but it might be -- using Windows Terminal Server or whatever that's called in the XP world. Surely that's what the MS Mira will do.

The portable display (along with a portable keyboard/pointer) is the missing link in my home network. I carry around a laptop with WiFi sometimes, but this is overkill. I want the smarts in the "house server" and the remote terminal to be comfortable to carry, nice to look at, and not too expensive.

So who's doing this in the OpenSource world?

--Martin

DRM

[tjansen]

Note that this kind of screen could be the first step to DRM mechanisms build into the output device: They could use it to send pictures or videos encrypted to the screen. Unless you know the key that's inside your screen there will be no chance to get the raw data. Much safer than a software solution. And at least a solution thats a little bit more OpenSource-friendly (you can safely give away the source of the OS without harming the DRM protection, because everything happens in the screen). Also note that the same thing is possible for audio with USB speakers.

Re:Cool, but... bandwidth

[richard-parker]

Yes, the monitor communicates with the PC via IEEE 802.11b at 11 Mbits/s. This isn't really adequate for anything that refreshes the screen a lot, especially since I doubt the communications protocol between the monitor and the PC is as high-level as the communication between an X client and an X server.

The philips page here gives more details. I don't know why the Slashdot article links to the Philips home page instead of the Philips page that discusses the monitor.

802.11b?

[tswinzig]

How in the hell are they getting video to the monitor over 802.11b. The article doesn't cover this aspect at all.

I can just imagine trying to decipher the text in my editor through all the block artifacts left from the MPEG compression they are doing to the video?!

IBMs Meta Pad

[XRayX]

IBM follows a much more interesting concept when it comes to such hybrid devices. It's called Meta Pad and is currently developed by IBM Research.
The MetaPad provides different services in different environments without rebooting.

Ease of use issues.

[buff_pilot]

I've been experimenting with this type of use at home. I've use both a Panasonic CF-01 and a Fujitsu Stylist 1200, using 802.11b. They are hooked into one of my machines that has a DSL connection. Having wireless web surfing was my prime reason. A few issues that I've experienced:

Battery life - 802.11b pcmcia cards seem to suck the lifeblood out of batteries. They really drain dry within an hour or two. They also generate a large amount of heat.

Screen Size - 800x600 would be the bare minimum for surfing. Anything less really is sub optimal on the user experience.

Keyboard input - In my opinion, this is a huge limitation. No keyboard means using sometype of onscreen keyboards, which really sucks. It's painful to type sentences by tapping on the screen and the "writing" recognition just isn't there yet. The killer app for these wireless handhelds will be someone coming up with a easy and RELIABLE way of entering textual data.

-jim