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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."
Think of the potential harm you can do by sniffing these networks.. Everything concerning patients in hospitals is classified information isn't it?
So now some war driver is going to be able to intercept the communications between my touchscreen monitor and PC? I think I'll pass.
How can we afford to ever sleep
So sound again
--ebtg
No... Imagine having a VNC terminal running on your LCD screen (complete with RAM and processor)-- no need for inputs, disk, etc. And another terminal running 'locally'. So now, not a whole lot of bandwidth is required to show images, and you in effect have a "wireless" screen.
It seems we can do an open source solution quite quickly...
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
Somebody check my math here, but an 800x600 resultion display with 24 bit color depth needs 11,520,000 bits to be described uncompressed. Yeah, I know there's all sorts of compression than can be applied, but this is going to need something along the lines 40X compression effectiveness in order to fit into an 802.11b signal, or about 10X if you want to use 802.11a. Mira had better be very good at shrinking the bandwidth down.
How many of these things can work within the same office building at once before the Wi-Fi bandwidth gets saturated and ends up jamming the other wireless networking functionality as well?
What is the name of that method of evesdropping on a user by intercepting the radiation from the monitor?
This brings a whole new meaning to evesdropping using the video output.
And even if the output is encrypted, somthing tells me that there would either be one master key, or some sort of escrow system that we have no control over. It seems like this technology would be great for the feds, and maybe a silent part of MS's agreement with the DOJ.
"We will market this technology, making it so pervasisve as to be the prefered method. Once everyone is using it, you can evesdrop on anyone, since we will give you the master key. In return, you slap our wrists on this other thing."
Instead of buying some proprietary solution:
Why not use a large lcd screen, a compact flash (or similar) HD, 128mb or so ram, and a small processor, and a PXE (network) boot over the 802.11 connection?
(essentially a large screen, minimal hardware, networked tablet PC)
That way the corporation can run whatever software it wants.
As people have pointed out though, its going to be hard to display movies or games on these (or videoconfrencing for that matter)
This
Stick a diskless client into a box with an LCD screen, hook it up over a wireless network, and "Holy Cow! Look at the latest innovation from Microsoft!"
I mean, really, it's not even an innovation by Microsoft terms, they've simply crippled a tablet PC. They're making a big deal over this "Mira" thing, when it is really just the next generation of what X Windows was fifteen years ago.
This kind of thing will fail for the same reason Sun's "network computer" failed. Why waste your money on a castrated client when you can get a real computer almost as cheap?
Given the way Remote Desktop currently works, remote 3D (or any app that writes directly to a framebuffer such as PowerDVD or most TV tuner software) won't be possible. (I know - I've tried TVs, DVDs, and 3D games over RDP with no luck.)
Remote Desktop doesn't read from the framebuffer. It switches the primary display to a virtualized video card and monitor with capabilities set by the client system (resolution, bit depth, etc.).
You can check this. Fire up a RDP session into an XP Pro box and open the display control panel. The video adapter listed won't be the physical video card you've got on the system.
Hopefully I'll turn out to be wrong about Mira devices (and Microsoft will have drivers reading from the card itself, making 3D and DVD possible), but with their past record, I'm probably right.
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
What advantages does a remote screen have over a notebook? (or tablet?)
I guess it would deter employee theft, because it wouldnt work outside the network.
But does it really make financial sense to buy something for inter building work, and then have to buy even more stuff so that employees can work outside the building (ie trips).
Or do they envision this thing to replace desktop PC's with wireless screens and massive centralized servers? (and what would the cost benifit be? it costs $500 to buy a full desktop PC, vs $1k for the wireless display, and then $50k for a server)
This
Sounds like they thought of embedding a VNC client with an 802.11 card into an LCD display. It's a nifty idea, really; the concept of decoupling the user interface from devices is interesting. For example, assuming VNC was the standard remote display protocol, imagine the following scenario:
1. The display (LCD monitor with a VNC client) broadcasts discovery beacons
2. Devices in range respond. Your stereo, fridge, computer, laptop, handheld, watch, all equipped with VNC servers, announce themselves.
3. The LCD monitor shows a list of discovered devices. You pick one to interact with, say the stereo.
4. The user interface designed by the manufacturer of the stereo pops up on the LCD monitor.
Now repeat the above with a similarly capable TV, or head-mounted display. Very cool. (Security is not really a problem, all this can be end-to-end encrypted and authenticated).
Admittedly, the mechanism is conceptually similar to HTML-based user interfaces. Howeveer, the difference is that the VNC-based system is less restricted in what the servers can display; with HTML, the servers are restricted to using browsers and the kind of interaction they induce. Also, the HTML system, due to requiring a browser, is more heavy-weight.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
My first thought, when reading this article, was "What about non-Windows users?" Then, after reading the comments, "Why is no one bringing up non-Windows users?"
But then, after a moment, I thought this-- would Linux/other "geek" OS users want to use a WiFi monitor, with all the inherent security concerns (not necessarily actual exploitable threats, but the scary POSSIBILITY of such a threat) involved?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Why not embed Linux and the XFree86 XServer on this wireless PC( I mean innovative display system ) and have xdm running on the beige box under the desk?
Wow, a remote display! How revolutionary!
If you want a taste of this then get a Sharp Zaurus, a WiFi card and install the XServer on it. You don't have the realestate of a 1028x768 display but the idea is the same.
Boy, this Microsoft thing is pure genius. NOT.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Now, I know that virtually nobody on Slashdot has a job, or for the most part, even graduated from high school yet, but this *does* have real world applications. Since this was picked up by ABC news, every story they do is gonna revolve around fat ass home users on their couches. BUT, this thing does have a very practical use.
I'd like to get a few for my store. I have PC's up front, all networked, running my POS systems. I don't really have room for them, and the wires networking them to the back room are a pain. This will be a perfect solution. I can get rid of the PC's in the front, I don't need to worry about employees tripping over wires, and I even have the touchscreen feature that I need.
My guess is that MS had this in mind when developing this, but you can't exactly explain that to ABC News, which caters to people with an average IQ equal to that of a doorknob.
I think you're missing the point:
How it works is fairly simple. The computer sends the data needed to create the icons and pictures for display using Wi-Fi, a wireless communication standard typically used to network different computers. The smart display picks up the data using a built-in Wi-Fi receiver and creates the images as needed.
"Data needed to create icons", not the icons themselves. This isn't a device that recieves output from the graphics card, it probably has its own chip for rendering.
I read on The Register that Mira will not support DVD viewing, apparently as a result of MPAA restrictions. Apparently retargeting the display is the equivalent of copying the DVD in the MPAA's opinion. If true, this is a ridiculous limitation.
What's the point? Wireless displays? Why bother, when you can build an entire wireless computer in a form factor that isn't any larger than this wireless display?
Cheaper, lighter, thinner, longer battery life.
The only people who don't see something like this as useful are people who can't imagine having a thin, light tablet lying around the living room ready for instant web access.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Oh, bullshit. Citrix WinFrame (which MS 'assimilated' to get this tech) was around for years and years before VNC.
It's just the Game of Slashdot. If Microsoft comes out with something you have to make up as many reasons as you can think of why it will fail, and why it's not innovative.
Of course, like the TabletPC, if a company announces a crappy Linux-based ripoff of this idea next week everybody will be suddenly interested in the possibilites.
I use my subnotebook on WiFi all the time now, and the keyboard usually just gets in the way. It seems to me that Mira would excellent as a 2nd monitor that I could just grab and carry around without having to power up my laptop, log in, and listen to the hard drive + occasional fan. The fact that it preserves my desktop session is another advantage over my laptop.
I suspect these devices will quickly drop well below even the lowest-end laptops in price because they're much simpler devices. The LCD display and battery probably make up the bulk of the cost.
I've got a Windows XP system and a Jornada 728 which runs Hanheld PC 2000 OS (a buggy, rehashed version of Windows CE). Using the terminal server client, I can connect to my Windows machine through my wireless Type II PC card and operate it from my very thin client. The stylus is the mouse, just like the machine in this story. The only problem is the screen on the Jornada 728 is very short (about 240 pixels or so) and not wide (about 640 pixesl or so). I have to scroll around a lot. But what's really great about the Jornada is that it has a keyboard, too. I run any application on the PC through the Jornada. It's cool and I think this product will be a success. In fact, I'm writing this post on the Jornada over my wireless connection!
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>