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Another Wireless Book
More vapor hardware to wish existed:
Peter Ostrowski
writes "Looks to
be a really cool way to access the internet from any where
in your house (including your bathroom). Its an all in one
magazine size computer with a 10.4 inch color LCD (touch
screen) and has a 2.4 GHz RF link to a base sation thats
hooked to the internet with a normal modem, DSL, or
cable.. Should be around $350-$400." I'm not sure how
I feel about surfing the web from the jon. I think I like
it, but I'm not so sure. Wireless would be cool, but think how
scary the effects of it would be...
Being married, it would be nice to still be able to access the net when i'm sleeping in the dog house.
teasea sans password (i'll have to get it tattood on!)
For some non-vaporware hardware that will allow you to do exactly what this is talking about with your laptop, check out http://www.proxim.com/symphony
They have a wireless modem and a wireless ethernet bridge, to match wireless PC cards and ISA cards.
Nice hardware, but they have a couple of fatal ... WinCE!? With any luck it'll be a open enough hardware platform that the WinCE problem can be dealt with. But I'm not holding out any hope.
design flaws:
- The cradle is wrong. They shouldn't have put in analog/DSL/Cable modem connections. It should just be plain 'ol ethernet. (Basically it should just be a ethernet-to-wireless bridge.) Most DSL and Cable modem devices are also ethernet based, so no need to treat them specially. I suppose they could include a modem for people who have no other computer equipement.
- Needs a PCMCIA socket. Badly.
- And last, but not least
Of course, if it DID do IRC, chatting while on the Jon would be quite interesting...
:)
Chatting while in the bedroom could get downright nasty!
Having unplugged my Vaio from the wall and carried it to the toilet while reading a particularly interesting web page, I can attest that portability IS addictive.
~luge
I want one NOW! I don't care what OS it runs. Gimme!
I snatched a bunch of defunct 486/50 junk laptops from work, made a few of them operational. Then, I purchased (discontinued) IBM Lan Entry wireless cards for $30/each that run at 350kbps and a 1500 foot range through most anything, and the 8227 bridge that lets them be on the land-lan.
So now I can go anywhere around my abode with nice little color laptops and be "connected" at any time, even in the garage or out back! It's GREAT! And it cost me $200 total!!!
I don't know if this is what you meant, but WHAT A GREAT IDEA!
Every house has a Linux server with X installed. Every notepad is an "diskless X workstation". Now users within a house can do everything they could from a desktop (assuming a fast net connect).
Oh baby! I need to do this! Who wants to help put this together?
Saturating your home with 2.4GHz RF is just *BEGGING* for trouble.
Perhaps a sensor could be built in to transmit what room of the house you're in. So, for example, if you're cooking, websites could serve you Tombstone Pizza ads. If you're on the throne, it could serve you Charmin or Lysol Air Freshener banners.
:)
Hmmmm...
Who are all these geeks who take so long in the john? Lay off the fritos once and a while, and try some apples or carrots.
You might could use the java version of Vnc. (of course in theory if it should be able to do whatever you want if it supports java.)
I think cyrix's design actually connected to a computer, via an RF signal.... Which means it could run Linux on the tablet, if someone were to write drivers to do that...
If computers are anything like this in 20 years, the human race will, once again, have clearly demonstraited it's collective lack of vision, mediocrity and ambivalence.
Think OUTSIDE the box, monkeyboy...
I like the system. I also like WebTV. But both
are useless- neither one has an ethernet port.
As the home access market changes over the
next few years, the only way a product is going
to last is if it has a fairly standard method
of getting on the network- Ethernet.
Besides, I don't have a cable line or analog
phone line to plug into at home- just ether.
Somebody, with money, please put together one that
runs Linux. Instead of CE.
Negatory... there are some test drivers out there, but they barely just initalize the cards...
It's not that bad to put 95 on all of em and a good telnet client, I just use it for web/shell access.
In the past month, I have
[] used a computer while on the toilet
[] accessed the net while on the toilet
[] posted to
[] flamed KDE, Gnome, Red Hat and/or Jon Katz on
[] Huh?
The problem for now is that PC/104 is quite expensive because they targeting entreprise embedded controlling systems: this kind of product targetted for mass-market and end-users, if sold as a lego-system, would do much to lower these prices.
Seriously, has anyone heard of studies done on the health effects of 2.4Ghz.
Would be nice to know considering we'll spend hours a day beaming it into hour heads and laps......
>A bit more accessible . . . less unpredictable.
:).
:)
>Qubit has been designed with all the reliability and durability expected of any household appliance.
>It's as dependable and convenient as a cordless phone and receives any required software maintenance automatically and remotely.
>A wireless Internet tablet which runs an embedded Windows operating system enabling a portal architecture stored on a CompactFlash card using the Windows 32-bit API
"dependable and convenient as a cordless phone" just like windows itself
Actually I've never seen a cordless telephone with a BSOD (or have they changed the color in CE to green to be more environmentally friendly?
Updated with the latest bugs automaticly what a nice feature.
Sure a stable version of windows that'll be the day!
Goodness! Thankyou for illuminating my ignorance! I had no idea I was an idiot. Now explain to me WHY.
It really needs a quick cam...for showing all your /. friends your handi-work on the john.
Was in a rush, miss typed URL, should have been
http://www.sandboxtechnologie s.com/foldableFRAME.html
Somehow I doubt they will be That cheap.
10.4 inch TFTs have been pushed into the instrumentation market, the price for the raw
TFT lingers around $500 when you buy them in
quantity of 1000.
Unless they sell millions of these things,
I don't see how they will get them below $750
each.
What is the security on those things? I just bought a radio and i m waiting to get my ham liscence and i m thinking...anyone can listen! and fsck up your computer!
---
Since my need for a portable computer is mainly so that I can irc or something less useless then the web (/. and a few other (rare) sites side) while sitting in the hot tub. I can see it now, sitting in a hot tub, chatting with a girl I already know to be cute online. If I was independantly wealthy I'd never had to leave, just use my cell phone (or the web) to have meals delivered. Oh wait, as some of you have pointed out, I need something for the John too.
From what I read on Proxim's site, all they provide is a wireless ethernet type solution.
This appliance is compact, has a touch-screen for doing your web navigation, and has an embedded OS (appliance-style power-ons). It's significantly cheaper than a standard laptop and doesn't have all the messy hardware associated with laptops. Configuration requirements are kept to an absolute minimum.
It's simple, portable and efficient.
It's not the same thing at all.
There are Java IRC (and telnet?) apps available. There's no reason you can't just use one of those.
This thing isn't on the shelves yet. It could be that by the time they're ready to ship, prices will have fallen enough to make that price goal seem reasonable.
And I would expect them to be selling millions of these things (especially at that price).
I would buy one at the $350-400 price, but if it goes any higher I'd have to think a bit harder about it.
ohh duh!, look at the spec's and U see it's designed for mum,dad and the ankle-biters...now while I agree a nice big chip et.,al. would be nice, this is for the mass-market web-consumer not '/. gcks'
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Since most web viewing is to porn sites (according to national media), having web access in the john is quite apropreate.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
I can use it in the bathroom.
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
This is really neat and all, but since it uses such an ungodly frequency and is cable modem compatible I assume it can achieve some decent bandwidth. What I would really like is a little transmitter with an ethernet jack, and a configurable IP address. The tablet would be a portable VNC client. This way you could access any desktop in your house, be it a Mac, Linux, or Windows machine without it going away when you shut off the tablet... also the VNC client would take hardly any OS at all.
For the unitiated, here is a link to VNC which has saved me more times than I would like to admit.. (left ICQ running at work)
http://www.orl.co.uk/vnc/
Well almost. Mine's got a 9" screen and something like a real keyboard on it. It's only 928MHz, but I can telnet to my linux box and do whatever I like from there. If I could get something current from the office I could probably even run X on it.
Actually, the VNC protocol was originally developed for Olivetti's VideoTile, which was a wireless LCD display you could pick up and carry with you. AFAIK, you wrote on it with a stylus.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
This would make a neat remote control for the house. Hook it up to your Linux box, and have it run an X server. Plug in a navigable 3d representation of your home, and maybe some custom tcl/tk apps for the more common stuff, and you are in business.
:-)
You could even make it flush the toilet you are sitting on from it
Come on folks...Dont tell me im the only one who has a rj45 in the crapper.
Have laptop will logon.
I have also used my palm pilot to dial into a shell from the can. Its easy, every one should have one in the bathrooms right next to the toilet paper.
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Dude, that's the point.. It doesn't do anything that geeks think is cool. But, you know what? It retrieves the basic things that the general populace needs and at a decent price. I would love to give grams an easy to use web/e-mail solution and let her rip.. :)
Later,
Eric
Eric Taylor
I dont know if I got it from ./ or not, but Cyrix has made a 'proof of concept' WebPad.. Esentialy what we see here, except there getting OEMs to do all the final stuff.
There paget is here
It runs QNX, and OEMs can add things like PCMCIA sockets and whateverelse they feel like. Unlike, say, a WebTV, or a PalmPilot, it has a 'real' processor, a MediaGx. No, dont think of playing Quake III on it, but its still cool. Not a replacement to a PC, or even to a laptop. But how many people have or want both a Palm and a laptop? This fits in the middle, and its nothing to cary around a clipboard is it?
I dont know if I'd buy a WebPad, but if they dropped the web and added another d... Where do I sign?
How about combining this with a Linux box in your trunk to make a cool interface for a car mp3 player. The trunk machine would decode the mp3s and serve web pages to this tablet. You could keep this in the front seat (or mounted on the dash or whatever), and you'd have an 800x600 color touch screen to control your mp3 player. Now that would be cool. (Although I agree, wince needs to go)
A wireless Internet tablet which runs an embedded Windows operating system enabling a portal architecture stored on a CompactFlash card using the Windows 32-bit API
ack!?!
b
As it stands right now, the rooms in the house we must use are the kitchen, the bathroom, and whatever room has the computer in it. We passed the point of being able to stay inside permanently long ago. With this new innovation we need only visit the kitchen and the bathroom. Let's hope it stays that way, because the next one to go would be the kitchen. Ugh.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Slashdot people always have good posts, but this has to be one of the funniest collections I have seen in quite a while. :)
hackproof NT machine at 207.104.108.11
I bet in 20 years 70% of all computers will look like this.
People want to mail and read stories and news.
They don't want to configure all there is to configure. They want to use a computer like they use a TV or telephone.
No hassles, just do what you want to do.
It's pretty clear that they're looking to compete with Web TV and are probably supplementing expensive hardware with an incremental revenue stream via the dialup service but when I look at this product it makes me want something a little more.
So raise your hand now if you're comfortable admitting that you've spent many an hour in bed with a laptop (for the sake of an example we'll assume the activity was READING). I feel like it's always a pain in the ass to go boot up my laptop if I want to get away from the desk and lie around somewhere while I'm reading documentation, or just surfing /. or whatever. If I could have a portable RF hooked monitor with touch screen for my Linux box that would be a dream.
Hmm. I wonder what chip they're running on. If it really is doing Win32 I bet there's a good shot this thing could run Linux. Then with Multihoned XFree86 maybe my dreams could come true.
bnf
this space intentionally left blank (oops)
There's no computer here, folks... it's just a stupid web browser in a box. I doubt it does telnet or ICQ or IRC or any of the other stuff that makes the world *really* great...
Don't throw your computers away yet!
Taral
WARN_(accel)("msg null; should hang here to be win compatible\n");
-- WINE source code
From the frequency, I suspect they're using a Wireless LAN system, probably IEEE 802.11
:-)
If it is 802.11, the transmit power limits are +30dBm (1 Watt) in the US, +20dBm (100 milliWatts) in Europe. These are the maximums, though, so the device might not transmit quite that much power.
On the other hand, 2.4GHz is near a peak of water absorption -- think microwave ovens (2.45GHz)!
Of course, exposure to risk is a matter of personal choice. If you're worried about mobile phones, you'll probably be worried by this. Me? I play with mobile phones all day.
Folio at SandboxTechnologies
Excerpt from site :- It provides similar functionality to that of other small PDAs like the 3Com PalmPilot. Unfolding the Foldable Computer once doubles its size, providing the ability to take notes and respond to email. Unfolding the computer a second time transforms it into a book form factor, suitable for web browsing and other electronic book documents. Completely unfolded, the display screen is 8.5" x 14", and suited for large, complex information. Moreover, at this size, the computer can be attached to a keyboard, powered from a wall outlet, and used like a traditional desktop computer.