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The PC Display has Left the Building
Makarand writes "A new class of PC displays, called Smart Displays, that will use Wi-Fi to effectively decouple
themselves from the PC will be unveiled next week at Comdex. Special software
from Microsoft ( code-named 'Mira') will be at the heart of these displays
allowing them to communicate with any PC running Windows XP within Wi-Fi range ( typically several hundred feet ). The surface of a Smart Display will be touch sensitive allowing you to interact using a finger or a stylus."
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That is exactly how they are going to work. The desktop sends view data to the tablet, not individual pixels. Most views don't change every frame, so that consumes much less bandwidth than sending everything every frame. This means that for most uses, there is very little noticable difference between this and a local monitor, but if you are running, say, Unreal Tournament 2003, this will slaughter your framerate.
It seems to use the MS Remote Desktop Connection feature to recreate the desktop with very little overhead in either processor time or bandwidth.
Assuming that it does operate as I stated above, then it shouldn't be too hard to get it to work with VNC or somesuch on non-Winxp computers.
It depends on the touchscreen technology. If you are using a capacitative or IR "touchscreen", then there is no real reason why you couldn't put some glass over it. If you are using a real touchscreen, then it has to be made of plastic because of the way that they work.
Real touchscreens use 2 plastic layers that are electricaly conductive and separated by a non-conductive oil. When you touch the screen, it makes contact between the two layers and the device can interpret that to provide positional data on the stylus or whatever you used.
...so using WiFi encryption would have your session doubley encrypted I guess.
If you haven't played around with RDP, checkout rdesktop ( http://www.rdesktop.org/ )
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Come on! It is nothing more than VNC over Wi-Fi! One calls this "embrace and extend" and this time VNC is the victim.
This is windows XP (and higher) only. Windows XP already comes with a VNC client server setup that works quite nicely. I can log in as any user and it operates at pretty decent speeds. Just wish multiple logons were possible. Either way, this is what they are using I'm sure. Infact if you bought a tablet PC with wifi you could probably do this right now, but hopefully as these will be dedicated towards VNC they will be significantly cheaper.
Didn't Viewsonic already do this? Slashdot Article
Basically an RDP session to the dekstop. Cool for certain applications, and could easily be applied to a X-Windows session too...
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
XP does not come with VNC preinstalled. You are probably thinking of Remote Desktop, which comes with XP Professional. While VNC xfers bitmaps of the screen, Remote Desktop xfers low-level Windows API calls. This makes it much more efficient and very fast, even on a low speed connection.
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I believe it runs RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) over WiFi. XP professional acts as a "terminal server" and the tablet runs as a client. There are linux/unix RDP clients out there (www.rdesktop.org) but I don't know of any *nix RDP servers.
Install vncserver on the winxp box. Install vncclient on the iBook. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
You say
You have a couple of problems with touch screens and standard applications.
1. The resolution of a touch screen is reduced because fingers (or stylus) are much fatter than mouse pointers.
2. It takes some adjustment to use since with some technologies you can't leave your finger lightly touching the screen, as with a keyboard or mouse.
3. Shoulder strain and muscle cramps. That's the reason why touch-sensitive monitors didn't take off at the same time as the original IBM PC.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
That really starts to turn it into a "Tablet PC" instead of a "Smart Display".
Not really. A smart display would probably only require symmetric encryption to be secure. According to my crypto prof, you can pick up high-speed 3-DES silicon for cents on the dollar. Toss in one of those spiffy 300mhz PICs and your work is done.
This would not make the monitor into anything approaching a PC, unless you also consider, eg. your car stereo to be a 'dashboard PC' and your calculator wristwatch to be a 'wrist PC'. (Although the latter case might be fun to assert around fine arts majors...)
- undoware.ca