Slashdot Mirror
Transmeta OK'd for Mira Displays
viewstyle writes "eweek is reporting that Transmeta's Crusoe chip has been approved by Microsoft for use in the Mira smart displays -- a move that further edges out AMD and Intel from the mobile processor marketplace."
Microsoft has been showing less and less interest in being an exclusive "partner" with our good friends at Intel... Maybe MS is taking the Tel out of WinTel.
anyone heard of Centrino? I think the crusoe is definitely a niche market, due to its low power consumption, but the centrino and mobile athlons are much more powerful . . . i hardly think they're being edged out of the market
Yeah, just the way Linux is "edging out" Windows as a desktop OS, or intelligent comments are "edging out" mindless Linux zealous idiocy on Slashdot.
Maybe "eeking out a small chunk of a large market and managing to stay afloat."
x86 is only one processor supported by the Mira platform.
To say that Transmeta is edging out a giant like Intel who has the PXA255 is just wrong. Transmeta doesn't have any edge in this market whereas Intel certainly does.
I have been pwned because my
Microsoft's company partnering with Linus Torvalds's company... hee!
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
The Transmeta chip being approved for use in one device hardly qualifies as edging anyone out of the mobile chip market, much less "further" edging them out. Besides, what do we (read as: geeks) have against AMD? I thought we liked them, no?
Don't count out Intel quite yet. The Pentium-M is still one of, if not the best mobile pure x86 processors out there. The rumor that Intel is additionally working on an ultra-ultra low-power version of the chip(600mhz, smaller L2 cache) would further prop themselves up in the Mira market, with their brand name tagging along for the ride. Transmeta has had a lot of problems so far breaking in to the US market, and I don't see them winning that easily so soon, especially with Chipzilla on the lookout.
Err... I mean "Microsoft". Just woke up, head groggy. Blluuuuuh.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
With the dot-com bust giving Transmeta a hard time, an approval by Microsoft could be just what they need to get back on their feet and out of bankruptcy.
Maybe this will be a lesson learned for the GNU/Linux community as well, to support the companies that use open source and contribute back to the movement. Everyone's all about freedom, but nobody seems to want to pay the price for it. Apparently Transmeta has seen this and is moving on to greener and more friendly pastures. Good for them I say, and I'm looking forward to the product.
Think about that the next time you Bittorrrent the latest release of Redhat instead of purchasing it. What would you do if they decided to switch over to Microsoft? You'd all be screwed then.
I've heard they're working on an SMP setup of the Crusoe (following the O'Doyle Rules to achieve n-way monopolization) to improve even further the CPU monopolization process.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
... edged right out of their tiny 15% and 80% market niches. Tremble, AMD and Intel, tremble.
It's like having VPN from anywhere in your house. It sounds like a dumb idea and for 95% of the people out there it probably is, but for the 5% who are left it is a real great technology.
It's laptop power without the heat and power consumption of a full-blown system.
I have been pwned because my
Does Bill Gates know that Linus Torvalds works for Transmeta?
Wherever you go, there you are!
You are not alone in your curiosity. I haven't the slightest clue what one even is. And the article is no help.
~
If you need me, I'll be hanging my computer from the
Thank you, Slashdot. Thank you for link subtitles.
What they're talking about here is giving the display some processing power of its own, so that it's more like a laptop that runs a terminal off of your main computer. If you're doing something on it, it won't cause your main computer to slow down (much), whereas the smart display uses a lot more of your computer's resources. Doesn't sound like a huge deal to me, except that it should be cheaper and more portable than a laptop.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I like Transmeta's product, but at this point one has to concede that maybe things haven't gone as well as Transmeta execs and shareholders had expected. The idea of putting Transmeta's low power product into embedded devices certainly has technical merit, but is this a well thought out approach, or a desparation swan song? Personally, I think Transmeta should have gone for the embedded market right off the bat. Or perhaps they did, and I simply don't know. Can anyone clarify?
Probably the same person who takes the doh out of windows
I had a pet once
It's good to see Transmeta making it's name more common but there are many options out there and (sad to say) Transmeta's name up against Intel and AMD is unlikely to sway consumers away from the two giants. But it's good to see more competition (it's the best part of capitalism).
It seems like this question has been asked several times in this thread.
e valuation/news/fromms/mira.asp
Here's the short version:
Mira (Smart Display) is a small, tablet-like device that becomes a remote terminal to a Windows XP machine. It uses wireless networking to create a Virtual Private Network (VPN) with the XP host. When connected, the Mira device can use all functions of the host PC.
Here's Microsoft's version:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/Embedded/ce.NET/
I have been pwned because my
Before you know it, this site will become exclusive to subscribers ... until April 12, 2005. By then, the trolls will have long since discovered the virtues of throwaway accounts.
I thought Paul Allen (cofounder of MS with Gates) was one of the principals in Transmeta (where Linus works). Not that strange to see them still working together on things (in fact, doesn't Allen still own a decent stake in MS?).
Common, the association between Transmeta and M$ isn't that new. Who was one of the major investor in Transmeta ??
M$ co-founder Paul Allen.
the thing reads like a press release, for crying out loud! not only are relatively minor points blown out of proportion in terms of significance (wow, transmeta gets approval. big deal.), but old information and disinformation are used alongside statements that really don't make much sense.
case in point:
A smart display requires a PC running Windows XP to operate and monopolizes the PC while it runs. A Tablet PC serves as a stand-alone computer.
If Transmeta can push the Crusoe into both smart displays and the Tablet PC, the feat will be proof that the market sees the Crusoe both as an embedded and as a general-purpose CPU. Over time, Intel Corp.'s Pentium series and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s K6 processors have been forced out of general-purpose PCs and notebooks and into the engines driving embedded devices. But the Crusoe still powers several Japanese ultralight notebooks.
a. thanks for dumbing down the definition of "smart display." thanks also for restricting its relevance to the article and parties involved. 8P
b. if transmeta gets its pizacrap crusoe into smart displays and tablet PCs, it gets its chip into smart displays and tablet PCs. that's all. if it works _well_ in both, and sells _well_, _then_ the market will be saying something.
c. sorry man, this is really bothering me: pentiums and the k6 line were "forced out" of the general PC segment because NEW, TASTIER and BETTER processors were introduced by their makers. for crying out loud, it's not like they were dumped from the PC market because of transmeta (ABANDON SHIT!).
d. BUT THE CRUSOE STILL POWERS SEVERAL JAPANENIAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAAA! wtf? the statement following the previous one makes it seem like the crusoe is the little mac of the mike tyson's punch out of the processor world. it outlasted everyone else! including intel and amd! it powers JAPANESE NOTEBOOKS!
that's because transmeta hasn't put out anything else that can best the line it's been offering. yeah, they're small in terms of size n power draw, and yeah, i'd like them to succeed cause you know, they were all ooohh-oooohhh! mysterious before they launched (remember their website?). but anyone with a modicum of literary aptitude should be able to read this article for what it is: big. donkey. dong.
Competition is good, but Intel has a good track record through buying companies / technologies like when they bought the Alpha technology, used about half of it, and parked the other half with big patents on it so that the competition wouldn't be able to use it.
Hopefully this won't happen with Transmeta because there is enough money behind it (with Allen et al...).
Since when does Microsoft "approve" what hardware can and cannot be used with its software?
...
Oh, wait
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Intel has the new XScale, and AMD has their Alchemy processors (MIPS32) for the Mira displays. AMD demoed the Mira running with the Au1500 recently, and ran better/faster than the PXA stuff from Intel. I saw it, it was reasonably cool.
The sad thing is, they're just re-inventing X-terminals. Mira is just a dumb display, the magic still happens on some big, beefy iron in the background. Everything old becomes new.
I don't get this "smart display" business. It sounds like a display with a CPU, some memory, and a wireless network interface, and a battery. In other words, it is a full-blown computer. Maybe (probably) the operating system is crippleware, but it sounds to me like you could put some proper software on there and use it like a wireless X11 terminal. Bonus: remote X11 users don't "monopolize the PC while they are running".
Does that mean they're gonna' take the PP out of Apple too?
So far in 2003, Transmeta has reported a net revenue of $6 million. (these numbers taken from Transmeta press releases)
These numbers are paltry compared to the industry giants Intel and AMD (especialy Intel), but they do reflect stability and massive growth since Q1 2002. No, Transmeta is no direct threat to Intel or AMD, but they deserve to be taken seriously nevertheless. The underdog is always forced to innovate, and market hype can swing an extra $2 to $3 million in revenue towards a company like Transmeta. Remember, we all laughed at AMD, too.
As for all of the negative comments, cmon, what do you expect? This is Slashdot afterall, and the creator of Linux works in a rather prominent role at Transmeta. This is exciting and encouraging to us Linux geeks.
My coworker has been battling his Compaq laptop over heat issues associated with his AMD CPU for the last two months. After three or four service arrangements, they are giving him a free upgrade. AMD laptop CPUs run so hot, even heat shields and redesigns couldn't save his laptop (and my old one, as a matter of fact, but that's a different story - damn you HP).
Yeah, real nice use there of a catchy soundbite to obscure the reality. Try this instead:
Everyone's all about free software, but nobody seems to want to pay the price for it. (Well, duhhh ??)
Not everyone who is in favour of open source buys into your heavy community gig, man. There's no moral obligation on anyone to give cash to anyone just because they're doing something labelled "open source". There are good ways to make money from open source and many companies have found them. Those ones don't need our charity - anyone that does is likely to go belly up soon anyway, taking your money down with them.
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
Any company wishing to develop a remote desktop solution for Microsoft is free to do so with any hardware they want to do. They can license Windows CE or whatever OS they want and implement their own version of the Remote Desktop Client. They can't call it Mira though.
Mira is a lot like PocketPC and is marketed as an "instant wireless screen in a box" to hardware vendors. Microsoft has invested some devs and time into generating a "Mira kit," that a hardware vendor can use and tweak to run on their own version of the hardware, without having to implement the remote desktop client and the Mira interface.
Mira devices can be customized (Although I bet 99% of the vendors out there are just shipping what MS gave them without any added value), but they define a subset of functionality that will always be present.
Transmeta probably had to provide a reasonably stable sample BSP for other hardware manufacturers to use as a base for their Transmeta based Mira device. They probably had to provide some reference hardware as well for Microsoft to play around with to get a reasonable assurance that final devices based on Transmeta won't be an embarassment in the marketplace.
How's that for some common sense?
Your even-handedness and actual knowledge of the issues at hand are confusing and disconcerting to me. Are you sure you're on the right website?
I have been pwned because my
The price gouging of their hardware, however, is just too much to bear. They are great for people that need them for very specific purposes (much like Linux, as a matter of fact), but the price of the hardware is just way too much for me.
What is it with girlfriends and letting them monopolize the desktop? I just bought a new workstation, and she gravitates to it like a bee to honey. Of course, I respect her for that.
Having a true thin client would mean I could continue "using" my workstation (or she could) without having to go out and buy a second computer - of course, this is a ways down the road, as the costs for tablet PCs are currently too high to justify the expense.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Windows XP only has a single seat license. You won't be able to have two users using the host at the same time.
I have been pwned because my
The net revenue for Transmeta in 2002 was $14.1 Million (1.5 Q1, 6.4 Q2, 6.3 Q3).
Unfortunately, revenue only tells part of the story. Transmeta's net loss for the fiscal year ended 12/31/2002 was $110 million (source http://biz.yahoo.com/p/t/tmta.html)
I think Transmeta's a great company... just want to make sure we paint the complete picture here: they lost about $100 million last year, and their stock is worth a little $1.00.
And I think this is great news. I don't really like Intel's stranglehold on the processor market, especially since AMD has processors that are equal if not better in most respects (the P4, with it's huge pipeline, sure takes a hit if it fails the branch prediction) but yet Intel is still considered the only "serious" choice to many people.
So, any company that has the balls of steel required to take on the microprocessor monopoly known as Intel, is an excellent company, as far as I'm concerned.
I'm glad they've been "OK'd" for this - it's a step in the right direction.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
You can not purchase Windows XP Media Center Edition and install it on a custom PC, you have to purchase an MS approved bundle from HP, Dell, or Gateway (perhaps there are more out now).
.:diatonic:.
>It's laptop power without the heat and power >consumption of a full-blown system.
Okay, why not export your X displays (maybe using IPv6?) from your big old Athlon in the basement to some old Pentium and PII laptops via 802.11?
Plus, you can do some local processing-- I don't need to talk to my big machine to play simple games and run Mozilla.
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
Who said that it ran Windows xp? If it's a real workstation (as in heavy duty graphics), I would be quite surprised if it ran Windows. All of the serious graphics workstations that I've ever seen are either SGIs or ran some *NIX. Where I used to work, we had a different name for workstations running Windows. Electronic typewriters.
Now, as far as I can tell, these Smart Displays (I use quotes because they are really pretty dumb) use technology that only interfaces with Windows. However, perhaps my post's grandparent didn't know that. It could be that he thought that they would work with his flavor of *NIX.
What would be really funny is if he got a dirt-cheap computer, slapped Windows xp on it, and set the Smart Display up to use that computer which was them connected through VNC or some such to his workstation. Of course, that would be about as speedy as molasses in January.
If vendors ever became that dependant on Transmeta, bankruptcy would be extremely unlikely; especially if a company the size of Dell were dependant. I'll leave it as an excercise for the reader to figure out why that is.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Satan making a deal with an Angel to release a new fancy line of religious based clothing?
This really isn't nothing new, Microsoft is willing to get into bed with anyone they can make money with, and that gives them Market Share. Intel has wanted control for a while, and the Tablet PC has shown a need for a wider variety of platforms.
That's why MS has Office for MacOS, and has flirted with releasing similar products for Linux (I think it was Office 97 that had Linux Executables available, though I don't remember exactly).
By the way, the C3 chip produced by VIA Technology will do the same job just as well.
Some X users have been bitching for years asking for a rework of the X server protocol, but always receiving the unix BOFH response: "but backwards compatibility..." Why do you think X has a fork now?
The MS protocol is at least two orders of magnitude more efficient than anything X could provide.
And mix that with the 3d hardware accelerated graphics API of longhorn, then you have graphics the way it should be.
Everything new will become new only when lisp machines return from the dead! bwa hahaha
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
>>A smart display requires a PC running Windows XP to operate and monopolizes the PC while it runs
Nah...I'll leave it alone
Let's see ... we have
... Winterminals heheh
Winmodems
Winprinters
WinLAN cards
WinWiFi cards
and now
all of it technology ideas and processes not invented by MS but repackaged and "decommoditized" (i.e. stolen).
Thieve on MS!!
What's the point though? Without the PC, they're useless! It's not like you can use them as a "super" PDA either--the "specialized" WinCE only connects to a base computer making them useless for anyone like students, kids that just want a quick pad to carry around for notes. Now it was a larger version of the Zarus with Linux and X it would be a killer App!
Speaking of killer apps, why hasn't transmeta built an actual Linux workpad device? A huge chunk of the processing power of that tiny chip goes to code emulation. I'm sure Linus has got to have a native linux for that chip that would kick ass! The smaller Miras are exactly what I'm looking for in a PDA, I just can't stand the tiny screens of the rest of the bunch as much as I like the Clie and Zaurus. Maybe Apple is the key to Linux growing. Yes, it sounds silly, but they are based in BSD so designing cross-OS apps like this for an OSX box would be already built in!
Realistically, I'm surprised the small chip players haven't used Linux to gang up on MS with smaller, cheaper, devices that run linux. If you could get over the cross-compiling issues [java, ANSI C, etc is badly needed here!] you could have a pure software world where hardware didn't matter. Transmeta is a company that would benifit greatly from this!
But... Linus works for Transmeta so lets get excited about Transmeta... and compare them to Intel and AMD...,
:)
VIA @4% market share
Transmeta less than 1%
Lets try to remember that despite all the good intentions, design wins and Microsoft approvals won't keep Transmeta afloat... sales will.
VIA will probably knock Intel out of the desktop market before Transmeta knocks anyone out of anywhere
Transmeta is hemorraging cash far faster than their revenue is growing. If they don't pull something out of their sleave but quick, they won't be around long enough to realize any of their code morphing dreams.
It sounds like a dumb idea and for 95% of the people out there it probably is
I think it's the other way round. Most non-technie people (mums, grandmas etc) want to write their emails from their living rooms, beds etc and a Mira would be perfect. You could setup the PC in a spare room and access it through the Mira from anywhere in the house.
Hey, not to troll, but has anyone actually *used* a transmeta-based computer? To summarize:
They suck. Hard.
I love the design goals of the crusoe, and the idea/engineering behind it is great. But after using a transmeta crusoe based laptop as my primary computer for around a year, I have come to the conclusion that they are just not in the same class as AMD and Intel offerings. Response is extremely sluggish, power efficiency (admittedly more of a function of the unit then the processor alone) isn't that great, and the overall computing experience is extremely frustrating at times--even after the cache warms up.
Again, not to knock transmeta, but I think these chips will thrive in the handheld/smart display/specialized computing arena. I don't think they belong in regular user pcs, including tablet pcs. The lag is just too great.
So you know where I'm coming from, this post was typed on a Fujitsu P2040, which has a transmeta crusoe 866mhz cpu, 256 megs ram, 30gig hdd, cd burner/dvd drive, etc. Average main battery life is around 2 hours, while the extended battery gives around 4. If you're thinking about buying a transmeta unit, feel free to drop me a line with any questions.
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
I had some workalikes too! ;-) I took some semi-dead oldish PC, told their GDM managed XServers to query the Application server and stuck a heap of ram on the one and only decent machine I had available serving the various XSessions. Shure, I had no crypto but, alas, behind a firewall I had little to worry and no intention to fiddle with ssh. Now BillyG takes us to the remarkably innovative world of remote XSessions, wow! Time to start saving to pick up one of these toys; hopefully the masses will craze for them, the prices will drop and us geeks can finally start playing with remoted X around the household without overhauling nasty old PCs... does GCC compile to Crusoe's native code? (if there is such a thing)
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
"All of the serious graphics workstations that I've ever seen are either SGIs or ran some *NIX. Where I used to work, we had a different name for workstations running Windows. Electronic typewriters"
God it's tiring
That was classic intercourse!
Just like AMD, they're a stick to beat Intel with to get them to come up with a better chip or a better price.
XBox was going to be AMD based and there has been talk of XBox 2 using AMD. But we all know that Intel will pull a very tempting deal out of the hat.
Gosh! And if you thought about it for more than .00001 seconds, maybe you would figure out that Mira is a system of software running on hardware and Microsoft don't build the hardware, but it does help for the OS to support the processor being used, at least occasionally!
/. crowd remind me of Joe McArthy?
Why is it so many of the
goatse . . . . if the DOJ case was conducted properly, Bill and Steve would have been good models for that site. . .
It seems to me that using vnc causes less load on the client (i.e X-server), than doing it the remote Xwindows way, what I would like to see is vnc on frambuffer. Can it be done?? it sure (not shure ^) should! That would be nicer (and using ssh on vnc is easy and with compression it's nice to the network as well), and it doesnt mess up my 8-color-bit display to bad ;), and my mouse on a flash in mozilla doesnt freeze up the scrolling and it's easy to have a script starting (pw protected httpd-dir) a vncserver through a cgi-script(from your local internet cafe and using a java-enabled browser(who are we kidding, its all damned IE), gives you a linux desktop that impress the lusers at the cafe!)
In the case of Intel and MS, both Intel and MS want there to be active competition for the other. Hence MS will support competitors to Intel in order to drive down CPU prices, and Intel will support Linux in order to drive down OS prices. Both will support a multiplicity of mobo makers, hard drive makers, video chipset makers and anyone else in order to keep those areas as low-priced commodities. I suspect that the current duopily in the graphics chipset market is causing both of them some concern. If either Nvidia or ATI win the bulk of the market then they will be able to start charging proprietary prices (to some extent they already are at the higher end) and thereby take away money from both Intel and MS. From the POV of ATI and Nvidia of course they want lots of competition for both Intel and MS, which helps to explain why both of them are taking the trouble to support Linux when the Linux share of the desktop graphics market is still under 1%.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
I think this is all a evil plot from Microsoft to keep Linus Torvalds working at Transmeta. Without this Transmeta might have to fire Linus and we all know what he will do with is spare time.....
a move that further edges out AMD and Intel from the mobile processor marketplace
Ah yes, another good story followed with the usual leading Slashdot-spin tagline. These have become the new Jon Katz.
Microsoft is not Intel exclusive. Windows CE officially supports PowerPC, Hitachi SH4, and MIPS, in addition to chips from Intel. And they also support some of Intel's non-x86 chips: ARM and StrongARM. These processors have been supported for Windows CE since at least 1997.
Sorry, I come from an OSX world. Apple doesn't slap you around the same way Microsoft does. (Sure, they slap you around, but in a completely different way.)
I'm talking about the future, and what I want from a slim client. I never mentioned XP in that equation because it doesn't fall under the heading of "things I want."
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
"--a move that further edges out AMD and Intel from the mobile processor marketplace."
Check out this link
How can you say that Intel and AMD are being edged out of the mobile processor market? Intel holds a large major of the market share. Sure AMD doesn't have a large market share but neither does Transmeta or VIA. No matter what Microsoft does, it going to take a lot more than an agreement with Transmeta to knock Intel out of the Majority in the Mobile Market....
Ok, so I must have been living under a rock...
Smart displays? Which monopolize the computer when connected? What are they talking about?!?
Tablet PCs serving as ordinary computers, yes, I follow that much. (why on earth someone would try marketing a laptop with a twistable display as the next big thing is beyond me, but never mind that for now).
Can some fellow slashdotter please enlighten me in the mysteries of the smart display?
What is it? And what was the reporter smoking when he wrote that it would monopolize the computer it was hooked up to? (that doesn't ring "smart" in my ears)
Yours,
The technology ignorant (apparently)
"The MS protocol is at least two orders of magnitude more efficient than anything X could provide.
And mix that with the 3d hardware accelerated graphics API of longhorn, then you have graphics the way it should be."
Really... and how do you figure that?
Let's take this one step at a time:
Is the 3d going to be rendered at the application server, or in the display? If its in the display, you will have to be transferring texture maps, etc. As well, you will need more memory, and graphics capability. If transferring bitmaps, you will be where VNC is today.
Having dispensed with the 3d argument, I'll tackle the 2 orders (100x). Is the graphics language 100x denser? (hint: it isn't) It can't be compression. (hint: most people do want lossless compression for most of your screen data -- this IS possible for lossy compression, though). You did say "at least".
This would be nice. 100x improvement means that I could replace my 100BT network with Bluetooth, and see interactive reponse with 30 users doing normal engineering type stuff. Other way, I should be able to have 3000 users on my 100BT network. That WOULD be nice. All with "dumber" terminals, and a central server. Go ahead, try it. (hint: if you get this working, you will be a VERY rich person)
As to reworking the X server protocol -- ok, but give me a shim. Since it *is* networkable, I would have to upgrade SUN/Solaris and Intel/Linux (and some others) applications at the same time. Very nasty. Also, Intel/Windows (cygwin). If I had a tranlating shim then I could deploy. Its just difficult to replace the whole thing across multiple platforms and OSs at once.
If you had said "*** makes a car that get 100x the fuel economy", I would ALSO question it (that would be approximately 3000MPG for those who are still with me). Why do some folks have the need to make these wild asinine claims?
Ratboy666
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Doesn't this just reek of long term issues with say something as simple as taking "screen grabs".
Another article I found in CNN here.
"This won't happen without Intel and AMD deciding both on the processor chip and the system design they'll build these things in," Gates said. "And there's even some work that needs to go in the video display and keyboard."
Having your CPU and MB hijacked is one thing, but your monitor and keyboard as well is just freaky... Next thing you know, you will be building a new system, and you find one of your components is a bad guy...
Keyboard: Sorry, I can't connect to your computer, your 3rd memory chip does not have palladium. Good-bye!
CPU: Sorry, this computer will shut down now, you are currently running an insecure non-palladium OS. (aka Linux)
Monitor: Sorry, this display is now shutting down, your video cable does not contain the proper DRM filters.
Mouse: Sorry, this mouse will shut down now, you have not registered your finger prints with the NSA. Click here, if you would like to register and continue using this mouse.
read: its microsoft's love child.
its like saying, "who said it would windows, I saw a bunch of real servers once, and they were running VMS, multics, netware, and even some flavors of *nix"
DUHHH, anything worth jack shit is, but remeber how some suppprisingly big companies actually use windows on the server end? It makes no sense, but hey, the marketting guys always win against the techies.
You haven't dispensed the 3D argument at all.
If you send something like API calls from server to client the only textures that need to be sent are the toolbar bitmaps. Only the heavily skinned applications will suffer performance. That's the approach remote desktop uses and it feels really fast without sacrifing 24bit color, as you have to do with VNC. I'm more worried about fonts (have to be the same in both server and client) that about your "textures".
My ultra cheap mobo with integrated cheap video has 3D acceleration more than enough to play games at 800x600 and decent framerate, it surely is more than enough for this.
And 3D with zbuffer solves a lot of current design problems. This is not a 80k poligons per second thing. May be all the poligons needed are just windows, or even controls. Very small number to handle.
But it solves the miriad of paint events problem, wich are no longer needed except for resize events. Less traffic too.
I don't have exact numbers (taking back the "at least part") but remote desktop is usable with 20kbps connections and VNC needs a local network for me to feel it that fast. (My 56k modem connects at that speed when rains several days here, wet lines). However, data is not the plural of anecdote.
About reworking Xprotocol, that backwards compatibility thing is the same excuse used for more than 10 years, and is somewhat valid; but library mantainers change APIs and broke other programs without any problem, and that has happened several times here, so it's a double moral thing, I believe.
Anyway, the 3D thing is a future enhancement, and X is here now. But it will be replaced or will evolve, hopefully.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.