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ViewSonic AirPanel v150 Review at Ars Technica
Haxby writes "Ars Technica has a pretty thorough review of the ViewSonic AirPanel (15 inch model). You might recall that this device/design won 'Best of Comdex' in 2002, but as the review clearly shows, it's not really all that great, and it's way overpriced. The biggest problem is video performance: it sucks. Poor resolution and hideous rendering times (partly Microsoft's RDC's fault) make it next to useless. Is more bandwidth the key to making these things more palatable?"
Is more bandwidth the key to making these things more palatable?
I think better use of the available bandwidth is more important than more bandwidth. You can have all the bandwidth you want, but if it doesn't use it properley, then it'll still be a poor piece of equipment.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Linux user here.
I've only just started looking at LCDs and need to know if anyone else sees them ALL looking like trash? I'm rarely up on new hardware tech, 3D stuff doesn't impress me and the ancient 17" CRT I have has done me well. However looking at several brands of LCDs I'm wondering whether I just see them different to other people, or if they truly only have one advantage, clarity. I've taken a look at the screens on Dell, Acer and Apple laptops, 15 & 17" screens from Dell Samsung and BenQ, and a few Apple Cinema Displays. I can only say I see the BEST of them as under a quarter the quality of even an average CRT. I couldn't see any reason to pay even HALF the price of a CRT for one, let alone MORE. Anyone else see LCDs like this, or are my eyes just plaine fucked?
This is where tablet pc's should be heading. You get all the power of your desktop, in a thin and light form factor you can carry around anywhere within a decent range. I hope R&D continues on these things. Maybe even build a very basic laptop into it so you can use it to take notes when outside of the range, and get full power and sync all your data automatically when you get back within range.
Because when one thinks of video driver support and lightning fast rendering, obviously they think of X11 running on a linux box.
Know what? It's ViewSonics device, it's up to ViewSonic to sink or swim. Quit making excuses, quit making everything into a "MS= teh sock!" argument.
Besides, CRAMAK GONA FIX IT!!!1!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If i am only interested for console (bash like) use, will prevent to suck that much??? like having all the super power of a 1mb ISA vga card on WinXP??? browse with Lynx, and with mutt read your email
Putting a windows cd backwards, plays evil messages, but it gets worse, putting it right, installs windows.
Compliments to the author for including that "15 inch" reference!
The strength of these Smart Displays is that they can have the capability to be a detachable monitor: when docked, they can act just like a normal DVI display, with full video speed, acceleration, etc etc, but when you want to get up, you just pick it up and it automatically goes into "remote" mode. Bring it back and put it in the dock, and *poof* you're back in normal monitor mode.
The problem is most manufacturers haven't implemented that capability. I'm pretty sure that Viewsonic hasn't, but others (such as the Philips DesXcape) have.
Not that I've seen it in action, so who knows how well it actually works.
It is a neat idea and all, but i'd prefer a simple VGA->radio->VGA system over a tablet PC + wifi (which is what this looks like). Then I could use my wireless mouse and keyboard and be set. Back when I had a windows machine, I never needed to remotely administrate it (it was just a gaming machine-- it didn't matter if it crashed while i was out). Of course, then there is VNC if you want a full blown desktop anywhere solution.
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Crudely Drawn Games
They need to complete the package. These things were intended to be sort of like removable monitors. At least that was the initial intention. Picture this: Instead of buying a plain Jane 15" LCD panel, you pay $100 more and get the new version airpanel XP yada yada model. Now here's the key. You setup the monitor like any other LCD panel. DVI connected to your computer and all that jazz. You use it as normal, and it sits in a little docking station at your desk, which makes the connection to the DVI connection and power for battery charging... Nature calls! You have to go drop a deuce, but you don't want to stop reading the most recent Slashback. What do you do! Well, since you upgraded to the newfangeled peripheral, you just pull your monitor out of it's docking station, and, ideally, it would automatigically connect over wi-fi just as the current model does to the account you were just logged into. So maybe it blanks out for a few seconds as it transitions to the XP remote desktop mode and the Windows CE control. Or maybe it just switches to the login screen as soon as you unhook it. How cool would that be? You have the best of both worlds, and it doesn't cost all THAT much as you are getting a full monitor that works at full speed as well. Now how HARD could it be to make a hardware bypass for this thing? I swear, make this work, and quickly and easily, and these will actually sell! NOone will pay that kind of cash for a glorified gigantic PDA. The really missed the boat on this one. The original concept was "a monitor you can take with you" but instead they just made a weak-ass remote desktop unit. Get me in that think tank and I'd have set them straight... -BaumSquad
After chatting with Caesar (who also helped test the airpanel), we agreed that this device is really a "glimpse of the future". We imagine that one day we will not need to be right in front of a computer just to control our other computers. We will be able to travel anywhere in a modern city and use an independent, portable device (cell phone, PDA, tablet PC, airpanel, etc.) to access or control the PC sitting at home. Will such a day ever arrive? Who's to say? But the airpanel does seem kind of futuristic.
Not that I necessarily agree with these comments, but if such a future were to come to pass, the likely hood of me choosing my living room to host my desktop-server would be slim to none. Ah, centrailized computing, here we come again... At least the iterations are close enough to each other now that we don't ever have to implement anything - by the time we might be thinking about actually moving towards centralizing, decentralizing will be the "next (er, current) big thing" again.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I've been hoping for something like this for a long time: a tablet that I can take somewhere like out on my porch or to school or wherever, and it mimics or uses my computer at home and all of it's programs. Basically, just a screen with USB ports that can connect (not sync, actually connect) with my home computer to enable me to have a moveable workspace. :)
Keyboard, mouse, Screen, and BAM protable workstation that's EXACTLY like the one I'm used to using. I'd be willing to have some sort of trade-off of performance, i.e. for more complicated things such as video editing or Photoshop, it would have the main computer (the desktop) do the work and just send the results when done to the tablet, all I need it for is basically a fancy display that allows remote control over my main computer and a place to plug in a keyboard
I came up with the idea of a portable, wireless terminal that transmitted the KVM signals to and from your desktop PC about ten years ago for an 8th grade science project...
I got a 'C'.
XeoMage
I use an iBook with RDC to my WinXP desktop. I get a good-sized keyboard, very good battery life, and acceptable WiFi performance. Granted, video plays poorly via RDC, but cut-and-paste works betweent RDC (I use RDC in a window) and Mac OS X, so if I have to pull up a video URL, I don't have too many problems.
The iBook is very reasonably priced for this purpose; at $1100-$1200 to set up, it makes working wirelessly on a desktop a lot more fun (and then you can start thinking about getting rid of your desktop monitor and keyboard, and sticking the CPU in a more unobtrusive place . . . and opening port 3389 on your firewall at home, so you can use your home fixed IP to access the machine via RDC . . . )
Ahhhh... but then again it's always fun to get an "M$ sux" quippy on the front page. I get it now. Of course if this was some open source software the reviewers would definitely be on crack. Not only that, they'd probably be in Microsoft's pocket and have an evil agenda.
No, that's OK. Don't thank me.
WIFI enabled laptops now, so you really should have recieved a D- . Chester Gould has already thought about that crap back in the day. Dick Tracy had a wrist TV/Communicator. Make that an F for plagarism.
I hate to defend MSFT but *please* point out a better protocol than RDC for the same CPU and bandwidth considerations...
I use RDC, VNC and X all day.. and RDC works as well as the rest.
I have a 15" LCD monitor just like this, with better resolution support and a better video card that supports 3D acceleration. It is so small and light that I can carry this monitor around. It has a built in mouse and keyboard on it, so I don't have to punch LCD screen for input. Everything all in one. Runs Linux. Interested? It is called ThinkPad.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
BTW Did you notice "Weight ~6 lbs"? That's pretty bad.
Only remote desktop display, and it's 6lbs???
My new Toshiba laptop with 17" display, hard drive, DVD drive, battery, keyboard, partridge in a pear tree, etc is 9lbs! What have they put in this thing???
Even the Apple powerbook with all it's internal goodies is 6+ lbs. For what it does, the weight and battery life of this thing is inexcusable. Fire your engineers!
Actually in my experience comparing RDC, PCAnywhere, and VNC, RDC blows the others away in terms of the speed and responsiveness it exhibits. It destroys VNC in other areas (copy/paste integration), and even though PCAnywhere has some file transfer capabilities, you can transfer files pretty easily with RDC in two different ways: (1) Copy a file on one end, paste it on the other, or (2) set RDC up to establish mapped drives for your remote computer so that you can copy files back and forth using normal windows networking.
I only wish there was a good client available for MacOS X, as I would love to switch to mac, but use RDC heavily and need a client with all the features available in the windows xp/2003 version.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I find it very clunky. It's actually slightly modified dumb terminal. It has a processor and it connects to windows through some implementation of remote desktop. The whole experience is just slow. You have to use one to really feel how slow it is, not to mention its high-magnitude gravitational pull (it's heavy). We ended up plugging the AC adaptor to a 220v outlet and returning it to the store.
I have an old Dell 233MHz Celeron-based laptop running Windows XP Pro and with a 802.11g card. For roughly half the price of the airpad (used at half.com), I still use RDP to connect to my desktop most of the time, but I get 5x the network speed (54Mbps) and a perfectly-capable (if somewhat outdated) independent machine that I travel with. Since I'm not *required* to use RDP, I can also pop open Mozilla in the living room if my wife is already on the desktop in the office (XP doesn't allow simultaneous console and RDP sessions).
Personally, I thought the review's take on RDP was a little harsh. It's light-years ahead of VNC (which I'm also a fan of but only for cross-platform situations), etc., transparently connects your local printers, USB devices, etc. to the remote machine, and is perfectly usable even over a dialup connection. There's even a freeware third-party utility to transfer small files w/o resorting to FTP, etc. Anyone expecting top-notch multimedia performance over a remote control via wireless is a friggin' moron. You either have to send uncompressed streams (BIG), aggressively recompress (as RDP does, leading to lag and quality loss), or implement fully-functional media playback at the local end (with all of the same codecs, etc.).
Anyway, I use RDP daily, and for general coding and browsing, I often forget that I'm running remotely.
The Achilles Heel for this device, IMHO, is price (I have a beautiful 19" Samsung LCD that was cheaper) and lack of VGA/DVI input (can't use it as a regular monitor). If I'm going to pay that much, I want a fully-functional tablet PC, not just a wirelessly-tethered LCD screen.
The only way to do this effectively would be to put hooks in the media player to divert the original compressed stream over the network and allow the decompression to occur on the screen.
As far as microsoft's implementation of RDP being abysmal, it's pretty much the most efficient of its kind out there. But I guess it's all relative to your expectations, right?
And is X any better ?
I use RDC all day and I find it extremely fast.
Much nicer than X to my server at home or VNC.
I bought an Apple 22" Cinema Display when they were first introduced about 3 years back, after having much experience with high-end CRT displays. So far, that first-generation Cinema Display has sold 14 others like it to people who saw mine. I don't expect to buy another CRT in my remaining lifetime.
This has been done a long time ago (early 90s) by Zenith -- the Zenith Cruisepad :)
That thing had a little AMD 386 chip embedded, and ran a Citrix WinFrame client, and your PC ran a WinFrame server.
I got one recently, to play with, and tried to get it to work, but couldn't, since the Citrix SW they use only runs on windows 3.1, which I can't even find an old disk of
Anyway, the point is that everything you do is being rendered/processed on the client side, which should theoretically make the display very lightweight in terms of hardware and therefore cheaper than a laptop. Unfortunately, I think Viewsonic missed the price point they were aiming for. If this thing were cheaper it would rock, as it stands now you might as well buy an inexpensive laptop.
There is a fairly decent client for OSX that I've been using. I only have one windows computer so I don't know what all features the windows client has but if you tell me what all you need I can try them on my powerbook this weekend sometime.
The reviewer doesn't seem to understand what RDP is and what it's used for. Obviously you cannot expect any remote desktop solution to come anywhere near the performance of a monitor plugged into your video card. It's just not possible.
We have one of these puppies at home. It's not perfect, but it's very nice. My wife uses it to browse online shops while she watches TV. It is absolutely perfect for that kind of usage.
This technology has a lot of room for improvement but if you have a basic understand of what it is and what the limitations are you can get a lot of use out of it. Asking for streaming video over RDP is just not reasonable today.
Be happy. Nothing else matters.
I appreciate the offer, but it might be easier for me to test it myself on my mom's iMac... where can I get this program? Thanks!
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
He's probably referring to this.
I use RDP to my servers from a wireless laptop at home. It works just fine in full screen mode. I wouldn't watch a movie or anything on it, but for work it is just fine and on some of my more ancient equipment it is faster than working locally.
My own experiences with Remote Desktop are identical. Comparing even TightVNC and RealVNC to RDC shows a good jump in responsiveness by using RDC. It just feels a whole lot smoother and more responsive. I've played with the settings, done all sorts of tweaks, and while you can improve VNC, you can't match RDC with it just yet.
However, when cross-platform is needed, I still pull out my VNC client.
I wonder how many RDC exploits exist these days.
The fucking Apple/Linux zealotry around here by people who have never even used XP makes me want to puke.
From the article:
After chatting with Caesar (who also helped test the airpanel), we agreed that this device is really a "glimpse of the future". We imagine that one day we will not need to be right in front of a computer just to control our other computers. We will be able to travel anywhere in a modern city and use an independent, portable device (cell phone, PDA, tablet PC, airpanel, etc.) to access or control the PC sitting at home. Will such a day ever arrive? Who's to say? But the airpanel does seem kind of futuristic.
Such a day came for me a long time ago, when I started running a TightVNC server on my desktop. I can access it on my laptop. I can access it on my PDA (a little cumbersome on my iPaq's 320x240 screen, though). And, here's the best part, I can access it anywhere, through any java-enabled web browser.
VNC, on my home network, is extremely zippy (as in watching DVDs is no problem zippy), and is even entirely useful for web browsing and document editing from far across the Internet. The TightVNC enhancements (integrated JPEG compression, etc.) also make a big difference in maximizing the intelligent use of available bandwidth which, judging by the article, Microsoft's RDC definitely does not. There is, however, one caveat: no integrated audio support. For that, I suppose you'll have to look at the network transparency feature in arts.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
you can also run apple's xserver and grab a copy of the open source x-windows version of the rdc... it runs fine under os x
it's over at sourceforge, and i believe it's fast and reliable too.
However, when cross-platform is needed, I still pull out my VNC client.
Yeah, about the only thing I use VNC for now is this bizarre (but cool) device we bought that is actually a 16-port KVM switch that you connect to via VNC.
I wonder how many RDC exploits exist these days.
Who knows, but I would never in a million years open any remote control protocol ports up on my firewall. We require 3DES VPN access to any private services like that, especially for anything like VNC, RDP, PCAnywhere that can take control entirely of a machine.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Awesome thanks! I had no idea there was an 'approved' client for Mac OS. I had only seen an open source attempt that didn't appear finished.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
FYI Microsoft did not develop it's terminal server technology. They bought it (shocker) from Citrix.
FYI Microsoft did not develop it's terminal server technology. They bought it (shocker) from Citrix.
;-) but I would be interested to know how long ago and far away was the original citrix purchase from the current version in Windows XP/2003? It has improved a lot since it's first days (I think in Windows 2000).
Not that I really care who developed the technology
People say the same thing about SQL Server being bought from Sybase, but in reality the current iteration is basically completely re-written and does not resemble the original product from Sybase (other than a lot of syntax features in Transact-SQL). At least that is my understanding of the situation.
I bring SQL Server up because this is perhaps the finest software product Microsoft has ever put out (since 7.0 anyway)... IMO.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
> *please* point out a better protocol than RDC for the same CPU and bandwidth considerations...
Citrix ICA?
Actual laptop computer to connect to your main box wirelessly: $800.00
HP Omnibook 6000 $700 from Infinity Micro. 15" screen, plus other stuff that makes it an actual computer. So, it's not a badass machine. What do you want for $700.00? And you'd have to buy a wireless ethernet setup. Linksys W11S4PC11--about a hundred bucks from newegg.com.
Just a monitor (but it has a touch screen): $900.00
Airpanel APV150P about $880 from thenerds.net 15" screen. Oh, yeah--you still need to buy a WAP for it to talk to. Fifty bucks.
Ummm...why would you buy an airpanel? Is a touch screen really that cool.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
The answer is DVI. I have two 19" Samsung LCD monitors. With analog they were a little disappointing; with DVI they are fantastic. The image quality is excellent.
Both the HPs can use the TS Client, and can connect to ANY TS or RDC server.
The ViewSonic is supported only for single-session RDC, and it does NOT have the client-side configurations available within the actual TS Client.
The 6-year-old Jornadas can even use the CITRIX Client. The NEW ViewSonic has no Citrix capability whatsoever.
Since these are Win CE Devices, following both the HW and SW reference designs, it is amazing that every other aspect of CE capability was removed but for the MIRA Shell.
The only thing keeping these from being "Super PDAs" is the OEM simply choses to leave the necessary components out of the ROM
A Super PDA could sync with your ActiveSync, browse without PC host, exchange files, run local apps like PDAWin, MiniStumbler or any other CE app.
Some people are already hacking these panels to break out of the MIRA Shell, but even then, capabilities are severely limited by what has been omitted from the CE code by the OEMs.
See http://www.aibohack.com/panel/install.htm for the current hack status.
With the premium price, you would be right to expect more. These things are more expensive than some full Tablet PCs capable of running WinXP or Linux, not CE burned into ROM.
The Jornadas (680,690 or 820) are available on eBay for (depending upon model) under $100.
The ViewSonics are $800-$1000 and the comparable Philips DexScape is around $1400.
Both Gateway and Dell are offering full-feature laptops for as low as $599. I can't imagine that the touch screen costs so much more that eliminating HD, CD, Floppy, ports, memory and PC CPU don't offset the cost.
And instant-on? If I choose between this crippled device and a Tablet or Laptop, I'll tolerate 45 seconds to boot for the rest of the capabilities.
Simply put, they ought to be cheaper than laptops.
This thing ought to sell for $299-$399.
The screen was way too small, yeah I know they said it was too big, but thats ok for these midgits, but I'm built like a truck, so big is no problem, any thing < 20", even in this mode is way too small. Also I'd need choice of OS, (linux for me) why would you want to run some other OS on it, what ever you run on the main machine needs to run on the portable interface as well, so they need to look at some way for it to pull it's OS from the main box, or some other easy soln to get the OS/interface you want on it.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
the idea that you can stream uncompressed (or poorly compressed, eg lzw/jpeg) video frames over a wireless connection is just foolish. Anyone that expects such a thing to work well over a wireless connection just isn't using their brain. It has little to do with the protocol.
Ohh yeah, cause we all know that TV's dont work with that cable plugged into them. Not like that antenna actually does anything. As for you mods who modded this idiot up, shame on you. Just because it sounds too stupid to be true doesn't mean it's true!!
Okay having read the artical- its disappointing that the prices were not included in the spec table with the other stats.
The device did nothing much that cannot be done with a proper tablet/laptop pc. As I run Linux for most serious applications(except gaming and music creation) then the lack of compatibility would put me off a great deal too. At work I regularly use X-on-SSH to interact with smaller apps(we have a very high bandwidth there and I have broadband here).
For streaming video - it would be better to just stream/dl the file and play/decode locally. Although slimp have a nice method of decoding, the re-encoding all streams as mp3s. The only issue I found with that was that it was not easy to reset the encoding bandwidth(AFAIK).
Overall - I cannot see why at that price, plus the price of a PC and all of its trappings, you would not want to buy a proper tablet pc or laptop pc instead.
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
hmmm.... uncompressed ntsc video stream, ~400Mbps, 802.11b wireless bandwidth: 11Mbps (on a good day).
FYI Microsoft did not develop it's terminal server technology. They bought it (shocker) from Citrix.
What are the chances that Terminal Services code has remained exactly the same architecturaly since 1997 when Microsoft licenced technology from Citrix? Lots of things that Microsoft purchases become entirely re-written within one or two version after the purchase. SQL Server originates from Sybase code, yet version 6.5 was a complete rewrite because the SQL team found Sybase code to be an unmaintainable nightmare they couldn't continue building on.