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

Microsoft Mira

[XRayX]

Microsoft presents something similiar on the CeBit. It's called Mira and is a hybrid between a PDA, a Webpad and a PC.
Read about it at CNet and Microsoft PressPass.

Re:Microsoft Mira

[cristofer8]

Microsoft announced MIRA awhile ago, and this seems to be exactly the same thing. As Mira is just the software behind it, I would not be surprised at all if the phillips screen actually runs on Mira. Just for more info, a Mira screen is running Windows CE.NET and connecting to a windows xp sp1 desktop through remote desktop. And no, it works terribly with video or 3d, since the CE screen can't render them well over an 11mb connection.

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

Re:protocol & usefulness

[richard-parker]

The question is what is the link protocol and what's in the "remote display".

It uses the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

Your guess about Windows Terminal Server is spot on. The article in German mentions that the Philips monitor is based on Microsoft's Mira technology, Mira relies on Microsoft's Terminal Server and Microsoft Terminal Server uses the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

But of course...

[selectspec]

Ever since the first PC's, the technology in the box has been modularized and extracted from the box. Ironically, the PC was to break us free from the centralized mainframes.

Networking has once again revitalized specialization, centralization and modularization of the components within the box. We no longer think of the printer being an accessory to the PC. Direct Attached, NAS, and SAN storage have moved disks out of the box. Applications which used to run on our PCs now live on the server.

We now ask questions about our PCs. Why is there a hard disk in my workstation? Why is there a CPU capable of immense processing power in my workstation that will run idle for most of its life? Why is there anything in my PC other than the input and output devices that I require? Why can't everything else go in a specialized room somewhere, where it can be maintained, backed up and monitored more easily? Perhaps more controversially, why do I have to bother with that room at all and couldn't it be a service that I subsribe to?