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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."
Now I can look at everyone else's porn as well as my own!
I interact with my Windows XP using a finger all the time.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Because when I think "security" I automatically think "Microsoft" and "802.11b."
If sure these will just FLY off the shelves, so people can ensure that the script kiddie next door will be able to watch in realtime as you type up your post to alt.members.nambla-- before you even hit the "Submit" button!
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
The resolution of a touch screen is reduced because fingers (or stylus) are much fatter than mouse pointers.
I like touch, but recognize the limitations involved as I have worked on touch drivers in the past.
Fight Spammers!
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Only $199.99 for this amazing device!!!
(note, not garenteed to break ssh tunnels)
This
The surface of a Smart Display will be touch sensitive allowing you to interact using a finger or a stylus
Now I can actually finger a user using a real finger.
$cat
Basicly Microsoft has just invented "the terminal". I already do this with my iBook. Its pretty creepy running XP remotely in full screen. Its unlikely that anyone will be able to play games with it.
This does bring up some interesting security issues, will the wifi network be encrypted in any way?
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
This sounds like something that Bill Gates thought up. It's like the Tablet PC: a solution in search of a problem.
Always remember that in the absence of other people's good ideas to steal, Microsoft attempts to "innovate." The result is usually crappy ideas that come from none other than Gates himself (the Tablet PC has been his pet project for a long time).
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? And of course you can simply remote your applications, using HTTP or X11, or even RDP if you really insist on staying in the Winworld. Sorry, I don't see any usefulness here.
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I don't believe it one bit. They purport to be able to send "video" through the air? Over long distances? Sorry, but for now I think we're stuck with cable television and cabled monitors. I just don't see how receiving pictures from thin air would work.
But think of the possibilities if it did! We could turn on a TV anywhere and receive the latest news and watch our favorite shows. We would no longer be restricted by wires. Imagine that, wireless TV!
qslack.com
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!
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.
Now (knowing this crowd) I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but I'll put it out: I want on of these. Not a wishy-washy TabletPC, but a "SmartDisplay."
As opposed to trying to find all the negatives about it (although I do agree on the security and bandwidth points), think of what you could do with one of these. Put it by your bedside table and read the newspaper/your email from the comfort of bed on Sunday morning. Watch a movie from your hammock in the backyard in the summer. Imagine a six-hundred student lecture with one of these terminal in each seat - interactivity that wouldn't suck.
Collaborative work in a design-office setting. Wanna get the guy across the room's opinion on what you did? Bring the screen over to him. Or pretty much any application that needs acces to huge amounts of visual information - categroized bad on where it is either on the monitor wall or on the Mira. And lastly, you know you want to be like Elliot Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies, working off one of these and a two-story video wall.
I was actually considering rolling one my own of these things for my dorm (so I could use my computer from bed and across the hall) - two WiFi cards, a laptop, and VNC. Then I remembered that I didn't have the cash for an AP and the the battery life on the laptop blew.
Oh well, I'll wait until these things get cheaper. And would your opinion on this whole thing be different if the words "MS" and "Bill Gates" had nothgin to do with it - what about a <fav distro>-based SmartDisplay?
Cue The Sun...
Of course, as in "security through obscurity" kind of secure. How silly I didn't think of that before....
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
"Smart Display" is the 21st century market-speak version of what used to be called the "dumb terminal". Mind you, it's not a bad idea, but it's neither new nor earthshaking.
Microsoft: Yesterday's technology, tomorrow!
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