We're going to hit the RAM limit a lot sooner than that on non-PAE 32-bit systems, because hardware virtual addresses come off the top of addressable physical RAM, i.e. on my desktop with 4GB of ram, only 3.5GB or so is actually accessible. Video cards, network cards, IDE controllers, etc. all claim addresses off the top. Those folks with dual 512MB PCI-express cards in SLI are already limited to something around 2.75GB on Windows XP 32bit. (no PAE support in Win XP)
Obviously, Linux users and Windows Server users can use PAE, but I expect the gaming market is going to drive adoption of 64-bit systems for RAM access in the Windows "consumer" market, unless MS decides to toss PAE into the low-end versions of Vista.
It may also be worth noting that there's more choice than just Gateway/Dell or assemble every component yourself. There's plenty of stores that will be happy to assemble and test a barebones hardware build for you, with or without an OS installed on the final result they sell you. You can mix the time-saving of having someone else strap the hardware together and locate hardware compatibility issues ("Why won't it POST with all four RAM slots filled?!") with the benefit of personal control over the software setup.
Last time I "built" a PC, I had envisioncs.net assemble and test-boot the annoying parts (motherboard, CPU, ram, power supply, case) and then added my own drives, video cards, and external components to the pre-assembled base.
I'm currently evaluating Python IDEs at the moment myself, starting with Wing IDE Professional, and while I don't have any conclusions yet, I can list what the current state of the market looks like.
Black Adder, has a "GUI designer with all the features of Qt Designer and generates Python and Ruby code." I can't seem to find pricing information on their website at the moment; I'm guessing the "Cannot connect to database server error" text is where an add-to-cart button is supposed to be. Their license is proprietary and the product is not free for redistribution, but source code is included.
Komodo Professional (US$295) has a GUI builder that uses Tkinter. (There's a $29.95 "Personal" edition, but that lacks the GUI builder and is restricted to non-commercial use, where "non-commercial use is defined as tasks for which you are not paid. If you are using Komodo as part of your job, you must purchase Komodo Professional.")
One can also combine using Qt Designer (licensed together with Qt; both GPL and proprietary license options available) with one of the above or with Wing IDE Professional (US$179) or PyDev (Eclipse Public License) which both look promising. Wing IDE Professional includes source code, though like Komodo, it is not free to distribute. (There's also a $30 Wing IDE Personal edition, but it's missing a number of key features from Professional that I would think just about any Python programmer would want, even for hobby use, so I don't really consider it an option. It also has a "non-commercial use" restriction, like Komodo.)
Parents can only do so much, and sometimes we need help from the community as a whole.
I think the key point is really the size of this community we're talking about. Federal and state laws restricting expression and publishing will meet a lot more resistance than county and city ones. A lot of us will fight tooth and nail against state laws like this but are more than happy for people to gather in a city with likeminded people and legislate the type of local environment they want. We really can't expect an entire state full of people--and certainly not an entire multi-cultural country like the U.S.--to agree on what entertainment is "bad for children."
Add a grand for a decent HDTV to get a lower resolution than a monitor. And you sit further away from that lesser monitor, to boot.
All right, I apologize in advance for launching into an only semi-related rant, but it's 2005 people. They're all just "monitors." Your choice of display devices is no longer limited by your choice of signal generators -- it hasn't been for ages. There's all sorts of ways to hook game machines up to "computer" monitors, and computers to "TVs." People need to get rid of the mental block in their heads that is making them think some magical force limits computers to monitors on a desk in the study and game machines to a big TV in front of a couch in the living room.
I continue to be amazed that, in 2005, people still post comments implying that a computer playing video content = a 20" or smaller monitor on a desk.
I understand the concept of poor households for whom even a single computer is a significant expense and where, for logistical reasons, their lone computer is distant from their lone semi-large-but-low-res TV, but I've yet to see any of the "I want to watch it on a big screen from the couch, not a computer" posters ever explain their comment with something like "I can't afford another computer for my TV." They simply post as if it was "common knowledge" that computers can never have big displays attached to them.
And the people posting things like "I'd rather watch it on the 60" HDTV in the living room with surround sound than on my computer" are just dumb. They can afford that setup but not an extra $500 PC to play video on it?
For anyone curious, WoW runs fine in a limited user account as long as that account has write privileges to the executable folder and files to allow updates. It also doesn't require any HKLM settings to run, so you don't need to even run the installer on your system, you just need the files it unpacks. (I used VMware to run the installer.)
I'm not sure games that require arbitrary patching of files on someone else's (Blizzard's) schedule are all that much easier to implement in any other OS, though. A separate copy of all the game files for each user would be prohibitively large, but giving all players write access to the executable directory allows any single user to bork the whole thing if they feel like it. (Not an issue if only one user has access to play that game, but.) The only other option with current security and file-system models is to have a privileged updater executable, and then you'd have to be trusting some updater application from Blizzard with root privs on a regular basis. Either that, or Blizzard would have to get its updates approved for addition to the distribution's package repository every time they wanted to update their game.
I'm already not a big fan of the way adding software to Linux and Windows systems requires full root privs as a matter of course. Most software only needs rights to write to one specified directory and add an entry to a list of installed software; why the heck should I have to give the installer full control of the system?
I actually like the clear separation of player from character that voice provides.
When I play with the same group for a while, especially across different games, where we know each other to at least some degree as existing beyond any one particular character, I find we tend to naturally talk as players on voice, and as characters in text -- if we want to have our character say something in character, (usually trying and failing to be funny, heh) we'll use the in-game text to have it come from the character's "mouth." It probably works best when the name used in the voice chat is not the same as the character name, something that's probably not practical when in groups with random people.
For anyone else like me who previously found GDS useless because it only worked in one single account per system, 2.0 is multi-user compatible, with independent indexes per user, so you can use it with priveleged files, EFS, etc.
I'll second that; I'm using a Matias with Windows, also, with a few key remaps.* For those to lazy to click the link, it uses microswitches for that old-school click.
Only complaint I can think of about it is that the transparent case means you can see any hair and dirt that accumulates inside it, heh.
(*Changed both Mac Command keys to Alt, Left Option to Windows Key, Right Option to Context Key, F13 to Print Screen, F14 to Scroll Lock, and F15 to Multimedia Play/Pause.)
the only reason why you'd want to do that is if you have reached your board's limitation on RAM, which, in that case, it would be much cheaper to simply upgrade to a new board and/or higher density RAM.
There's probably a few people stuck trying to get extra performance out of a 32-bit environment for whatever reason, unable to use more than 4GB of main RAM, but it does seem like a product with a rather limited market at this point.
As an aside, are 8GB+-capable boards really cheaper these days than standard workstation boards + the cost of this card?
If Japanese DVDs didn't cost twice as much for half as many episodes, I wouldn't have any R1 DVDs in my collection.
Something worth noting: A good Japanese anime DVD with 2 episodes on it, uses more of the DVD's space than a US DVD with 4-5 episodes and English audio.
Sounds like you've already voted with your wallet. You've chosen price over quality.
Foreign fans are only willing to spend a fraction of the money that Japanese fans spend per episode buying DVDs. It shouldn't come as any surprise that they get a fraction of the "respect." Their opinions simply aren't worth as much.
For me, in both IE6 and Firefox 1.0.4, my system slowed to an almost uncontrollable crawl while it tried to render the image. It eventually finishes, although any attempt to scroll the image starts it up again. Keyboard/mouse input gets through occasionally during the rendering, so you can hit alt-F4 and wait a minute and it'll stop. I can bring up Task Manager, but it's almost impossible to control while the rendering is going on.
My system is an up-to-date Windows XP SP2 installation, P4 3.4GHz EE with HT turned on, Intel 875PBZ motherboard, 4GB of RAM, a GForce 5950 Ultra on AGP w/driver ver 61.77 and a Voodoo 3 2000 on PCI with default MS drivers. (I only tested in a normal LUA, not an admin account, on this system.)
The results are the same regardless of whether my browser window is on a screen driven by the GForce or the screen driven by the Voodoo; does that mean it's not a video driver issue? What causes this effect? The process doesn't appear to use much RAM, just CPU. Anyone here with multiple CPUs care to report?
--- While my real system did not suffer a BSOD, a test XP SP2 system inside VMWare viewing the link with IE as admin does blue screen.
The problem, of course, is going to get worse as long as Windows continues to allow users to run with privileged access by default.
I see people repeat this mantra a lot, but I really have to wonder if a clueless user in front of a Linux or Mac OS X box would at all hesitate to provide their root password when the installer for a "cool screensaver" prompts them for it.
For those who are working on making poorly written applications run in LUAs, rather than giving write permissions to specific directories or registry keys, you may want to look into using the redirect function of the Application Compatibility Toolkit. In a multi-user environment where you want each user to have their own config files, etc, ACT can redirect the application's file writing to each user's profile directory.
Just to add some confirmation to this, I have a set of useless, un-restorable Windows Media licenses. I began tentatively experimenting with Windows Media protected files many years ago (before U.S. WMA stores appeared, there were DRM WMA-based stores in Japan from major labels like Avex). I didn't really trust it and made sure to make re-recordings of the songs. Sure enough, after several new computers and OS upgrades and whatnot, that set of licenses I originally built is no longer restorable. It let me do it more than twice (I believe it was five times, actually) but no more. If I'd trusted the system, all of those songs would simply be gone now. Some of them are from stores that no longer exist. (Toshiba EMI shut down their Japanese WMA-base store.)
I now only buy DRMed songs in cases where the inability to restore the licenses doesn't matter, which is a rather rare situation (basically, only when buying a song single that I expect to be re-buying as part of an album in a few months). Recording and re-tagging is more trouble than its worth. (HYMN makes iTunes usable, though.)
The situation is even worse if you want to be able to play your music on multiple computers, like a desktop and a laptop.
DRMed music should be thought of as a temporary, limited rental only. It's completely untrustworthy for permanent use. I think the monthly subscription-based "all you can eat" DRM music rental services make sense (comparable to porn site subscriptions) but that's the only use I can see for it.
Actually, I find it surprising that someone would suggest that auto-updates are better in Windows currently than in Linux-based systems; it's the exact opposite. One of the key cultural advantages Linux has over Windows is the use of central distro repositories for the acquisition and updating of virtually all software on the system. This allows one single update process to update everything on the system at whatever interval you set.
In Windows, this is only available for core OS components; even Microsoft Office doesn't support automatic updates. Every other miscellaneous installed application -- including things that at the most risk for exploits because they are constantly exposed to foreign data, such as Macromedia Flash, Quicktime, Realplayer, etc -- must be upgraded individually. Some of them have their own built-in update checking systems, but very few are capable of updating themselves automatically unless you are always running them with administrator rights. The only way the Windows world could have the smooth auto-update functionality of the Linux world would be for each individual application to install its own auto-update service. I'm primarily a Windows users for miscellaneous reasons, but I've found myself paying money to www.versiontracker.com just to try and keep up with new versions of software without spending ungodly amounts of time checking every single individual website manually. The supreme ease of updates in Linux is one of its greatest strengths.
I'm not sure how many Linux distros come with a check box to turn on a daily cron job for fully automatic updating, but any that are intended to be used by fairly clueless users should probably do this by default.
That varies a lot from person to person. If you want all the features that are included in mobile phone services (call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding, voice mail, nationwide long-distance minutes, etc.) then it can be a good deal. But if you don't care about any of that, it's easy to get a bare-bones landline that is half the cost of mobile service. My landline costs US$22.44 a month after all fees and taxes ($11.23 before "surcharges" and sales tax.). I use a no-monthly-fee VoIP service for the few times year a call long distance.
A lot of people will scoff at huge "laptops," but the fact of the matter is, if you need a computer that you can move to abritrary locations and set up with no expectation of any hardware already being available at the location, this is currently the only practical way to carry a big screen around with you.
It'd be nice if there were LCD monitors specifically designed for portability that could be used to create this effect with any laptop. Current LCD monitor designs, with their bulky bases and lack of any screen cover, are not exactly practical for this. Maybe they could open up like laptops and use the weight of the laptop to hold the base in place.
You'd still need a way to deal with the laptop screen blocking the external monitor, though, unless you enjoy turning your head to the side. (We're already lugging two sizable pieces at this point; we don't want to add a keyboard to the mix on top of that.) Some variation of the tablet swivel-screen that covered the screen but exposed the keyboard would be nice.
Heck, easily portable 20" LCD monitors would be nice even just for carrying around with extremely small form-factor PCs.
Slashdot Mirror
We're going to hit the RAM limit a lot sooner than that on non-PAE 32-bit systems, because hardware virtual addresses come off the top of addressable physical RAM, i.e. on my desktop with 4GB of ram, only 3.5GB or so is actually accessible. Video cards, network cards, IDE controllers, etc. all claim addresses off the top. Those folks with dual 512MB PCI-express cards in SLI are already limited to something around 2.75GB on Windows XP 32bit. (no PAE support in Win XP)
Obviously, Linux users and Windows Server users can use PAE, but I expect the gaming market is going to drive adoption of 64-bit systems for RAM access in the Windows "consumer" market, unless MS decides to toss PAE into the low-end versions of Vista.
It may also be worth noting that there's more choice than just Gateway/Dell or assemble every component yourself. There's plenty of stores that will be happy to assemble and test a barebones hardware build for you, with or without an OS installed on the final result they sell you. You can mix the time-saving of having someone else strap the hardware together and locate hardware compatibility issues ("Why won't it POST with all four RAM slots filled?!") with the benefit of personal control over the software setup.
Last time I "built" a PC, I had envisioncs.net assemble and test-boot the annoying parts (motherboard, CPU, ram, power supply, case) and then added my own drives, video cards, and external components to the pre-assembled base.
I'm currently evaluating Python IDEs at the moment myself, starting with Wing IDE Professional, and while I don't have any conclusions yet, I can list what the current state of the market looks like.
Black Adder, has a "GUI designer with all the features of Qt Designer and generates Python and Ruby code." I can't seem to find pricing information on their website at the moment; I'm guessing the "Cannot connect to database server error" text is where an add-to-cart button is supposed to be. Their license is proprietary and the product is not free for redistribution, but source code is included.
SPE - Stani's Python Editor features the wxGlade GUI designer as a plugin. Open source, GPL license.
Komodo Professional (US$295) has a GUI builder that uses Tkinter. (There's a $29.95 "Personal" edition, but that lacks the GUI builder and is restricted to non-commercial use, where "non-commercial use is defined as tasks for which you are not paid. If you are using Komodo as part of your job, you must purchase Komodo Professional.")
One can also combine using Qt Designer (licensed together with Qt; both GPL and proprietary license options available) with one of the above or with Wing IDE Professional (US$179) or PyDev (Eclipse Public License) which both look promising. Wing IDE Professional includes source code, though like Komodo, it is not free to distribute. (There's also a $30 Wing IDE Personal edition, but it's missing a number of key features from Professional that I would think just about any Python programmer would want, even for hobby use, so I don't really consider it an option. It also has a "non-commercial use" restriction, like Komodo.)
I don't watch TV, but playing Guild Wars at 1920x1080 on a 70" DLP is pretty spiffy.
Parents can only do so much, and sometimes we need help from the community as a whole.
I think the key point is really the size of this community we're talking about. Federal and state laws restricting expression and publishing will meet a lot more resistance than county and city ones. A lot of us will fight tooth and nail against state laws like this but are more than happy for people to gather in a city with likeminded people and legislate the type of local environment they want. We really can't expect an entire state full of people--and certainly not an entire multi-cultural country like the U.S.--to agree on what entertainment is "bad for children."
Add a grand for a decent HDTV to get a lower resolution than a monitor. And you sit further away from that lesser monitor, to boot.
All right, I apologize in advance for launching into an only semi-related rant, but it's 2005 people. They're all just "monitors." Your choice of display devices is no longer limited by your choice of signal generators -- it hasn't been for ages. There's all sorts of ways to hook game machines up to "computer" monitors, and computers to "TVs." People need to get rid of the mental block in their heads that is making them think some magical force limits computers to monitors on a desk in the study and game machines to a big TV in front of a couch in the living room.
I continue to be amazed that, in 2005, people still post comments implying that a computer playing video content = a 20" or smaller monitor on a desk.
I understand the concept of poor households for whom even a single computer is a significant expense and where, for logistical reasons, their lone computer is distant from their lone semi-large-but-low-res TV, but I've yet to see any of the "I want to watch it on a big screen from the couch, not a computer" posters ever explain their comment with something like "I can't afford another computer for my TV." They simply post as if it was "common knowledge" that computers can never have big displays attached to them.
And the people posting things like "I'd rather watch it on the 60" HDTV in the living room with surround sound than on my computer" are just dumb. They can afford that setup but not an extra $500 PC to play video on it?
There is no difference in the behavior of the "Run As" function between XP Professional and XP Home Edition.
For anyone curious, WoW runs fine in a limited user account as long as that account has write privileges to the executable folder and files to allow updates. It also doesn't require any HKLM settings to run, so you don't need to even run the installer on your system, you just need the files it unpacks. (I used VMware to run the installer.)
I'm not sure games that require arbitrary patching of files on someone else's (Blizzard's) schedule are all that much easier to implement in any other OS, though. A separate copy of all the game files for each user would be prohibitively large, but giving all players write access to the executable directory allows any single user to bork the whole thing if they feel like it. (Not an issue if only one user has access to play that game, but.) The only other option with current security and file-system models is to have a privileged updater executable, and then you'd have to be trusting some updater application from Blizzard with root privs on a regular basis. Either that, or Blizzard would have to get its updates approved for addition to the distribution's package repository every time they wanted to update their game.
I'm already not a big fan of the way adding software to Linux and Windows systems requires full root privs as a matter of course. Most software only needs rights to write to one specified directory and add an entry to a list of installed software; why the heck should I have to give the installer full control of the system?
I actually like the clear separation of player from character that voice provides.
When I play with the same group for a while, especially across different games, where we know each other to at least some degree as existing beyond any one particular character, I find we tend to naturally talk as players on voice, and as characters in text -- if we want to have our character say something in character, (usually trying and failing to be funny, heh) we'll use the in-game text to have it come from the character's "mouth." It probably works best when the name used in the voice chat is not the same as the character name, something that's probably not practical when in groups with random people.
For anyone else like me who previously found GDS useless because it only worked in one single account per system, 2.0 is multi-user compatible, with independent indexes per user, so you can use it with priveleged files, EFS, etc.
I'll second that; I'm using a Matias with Windows, also, with a few key remaps.* For those to lazy to click the link, it uses microswitches for that old-school click. Only complaint I can think of about it is that the transparent case means you can see any hair and dirt that accumulates inside it, heh.
(*Changed both Mac Command keys to Alt, Left Option to Windows Key, Right Option to Context Key, F13 to Print Screen, F14 to Scroll Lock, and F15 to Multimedia Play/Pause.)
the only reason why you'd want to do that is if you have reached your board's limitation on RAM, which, in that case, it would be much cheaper to simply upgrade to a new board and/or higher density RAM.
There's probably a few people stuck trying to get extra performance out of a 32-bit environment for whatever reason, unable to use more than 4GB of main RAM, but it does seem like a product with a rather limited market at this point.
As an aside, are 8GB+-capable boards really cheaper these days than standard workstation boards + the cost of this card?
If Japanese DVDs didn't cost twice as much for half as many episodes, I wouldn't have any R1 DVDs in my collection.
Something worth noting: A good Japanese anime DVD with 2 episodes on it, uses more of the DVD's space than a US DVD with 4-5 episodes and English audio.
Sounds like you've already voted with your wallet. You've chosen price over quality.
Foreign fans are only willing to spend a fraction of the money that Japanese fans spend per episode buying DVDs. It shouldn't come as any surprise that they get a fraction of the "respect." Their opinions simply aren't worth as much.
For me, in both IE6 and Firefox 1.0.4, my system slowed to an almost uncontrollable crawl while it tried to render the image. It eventually finishes, although any attempt to scroll the image starts it up again. Keyboard/mouse input gets through occasionally during the rendering, so you can hit alt-F4 and wait a minute and it'll stop. I can bring up Task Manager, but it's almost impossible to control while the rendering is going on.
My system is an up-to-date Windows XP SP2 installation, P4 3.4GHz EE with HT turned on, Intel 875PBZ motherboard, 4GB of RAM, a GForce 5950 Ultra on AGP w/driver ver 61.77 and a Voodoo 3 2000 on PCI with default MS drivers. (I only tested in a normal LUA, not an admin account, on this system.)
The results are the same regardless of whether my browser window is on a screen driven by the GForce or the screen driven by the Voodoo; does that mean it's not a video driver issue? What causes this effect?
The process doesn't appear to use much RAM, just CPU. Anyone here with multiple CPUs care to report?
---
While my real system did not suffer a BSOD, a test XP SP2 system inside VMWare viewing the link with IE as admin does blue screen.
The problem, of course, is going to get worse as long as Windows continues to allow users to run with privileged access by default.
I see people repeat this mantra a lot, but I really have to wonder if a clueless user in front of a Linux or Mac OS X box would at all hesitate to provide their root password when the installer for a "cool screensaver" prompts them for it.
For those who are working on making poorly written applications run in LUAs, rather than giving write permissions to specific directories or registry keys, you may want to look into using the redirect function of the Application Compatibility Toolkit. In a multi-user environment where you want each user to have their own config files, etc, ACT can redirect the application's file writing to each user's profile directory.
Seems like the best thing would be a random layout that changes each time it's accessed, so the mouse positions alone are not meaningful.
It could still be defeated with either complete page contents logging (in addition to mouse logging) or screen video capture.
Just to add some confirmation to this, I have a set of useless, un-restorable Windows Media licenses. I began tentatively experimenting with Windows Media protected files many years ago (before U.S. WMA stores appeared, there were DRM WMA-based stores in Japan from major labels like Avex). I didn't really trust it and made sure to make re-recordings of the songs. Sure enough, after several new computers and OS upgrades and whatnot, that set of licenses I originally built is no longer restorable. It let me do it more than twice (I believe it was five times, actually) but no more. If I'd trusted the system, all of those songs would simply be gone now. Some of them are from stores that no longer exist. (Toshiba EMI shut down their Japanese WMA-base store.)
I now only buy DRMed songs in cases where the inability to restore the licenses doesn't matter, which is a rather rare situation (basically, only when buying a song single that I expect to be re-buying as part of an album in a few months). Recording and re-tagging is more trouble than its worth. (HYMN makes iTunes usable, though.)
The situation is even worse if you want to be able to play your music on multiple computers, like a desktop and a laptop.
DRMed music should be thought of as a temporary, limited rental only. It's completely untrustworthy for permanent use. I think the monthly subscription-based "all you can eat" DRM music rental services make sense (comparable to porn site subscriptions) but that's the only use I can see for it.
And broadcast the results on pay-per-view!
Actually, I find it surprising that someone would suggest that auto-updates are better in Windows currently than in Linux-based systems; it's the exact opposite. One of the key cultural advantages Linux has over Windows is the use of central distro repositories for the acquisition and updating of virtually all software on the system. This allows one single update process to update everything on the system at whatever interval you set.
In Windows, this is only available for core OS components; even Microsoft Office doesn't support automatic updates. Every other miscellaneous installed application -- including things that at the most risk for exploits because they are constantly exposed to foreign data, such as Macromedia Flash, Quicktime, Realplayer, etc -- must be upgraded individually. Some of them have their own built-in update checking systems, but very few are capable of updating themselves automatically unless you are always running them with administrator rights. The only way the Windows world could have the smooth auto-update functionality of the Linux world would be for each individual application to install its own auto-update service. I'm primarily a Windows users for miscellaneous reasons, but I've found myself paying money to www.versiontracker.com just to try and keep up with new versions of software without spending ungodly amounts of time checking every single individual website manually. The supreme ease of updates in Linux is one of its greatest strengths.
I'm not sure how many Linux distros come with a check box to turn on a daily cron job for fully automatic updating, but any that are intended to be used by fairly clueless users should probably do this by default.
Sorry, this is more of a Google search bash than a comment on MS's, since none of the other desktop search utilities have this problem, either:
:)
"Google Desktop Search can be installed under only one Windows username per computer"
Pretty sad, really. Google may produce nice web apps, but they apparently have no clue how to program for Windows.
Maybe they're not bothering to learn Windows programming because everybody will be using GoogleOS in a few years anyway.
a cellphone is cheaper than your home phone
That varies a lot from person to person. If you want all the features that are included in mobile phone services (call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding, voice mail, nationwide long-distance minutes, etc.) then it can be a good deal. But if you don't care about any of that, it's easy to get a bare-bones landline that is half the cost of mobile service. My landline costs US$22.44 a month after all fees and taxes ($11.23 before "surcharges" and sales tax.). I use a no-monthly-fee VoIP service for the few times year a call long distance.
No full-screen mode, either.
Very annoying on high-res displays.
A lot of people will scoff at huge "laptops," but the fact of the matter is, if you need a computer that you can move to abritrary locations and set up with no expectation of any hardware already being available at the location, this is currently the only practical way to carry a big screen around with you.
It'd be nice if there were LCD monitors specifically designed for portability that could be used to create this effect with any laptop. Current LCD monitor designs, with their bulky bases and lack of any screen cover, are not exactly practical for this. Maybe they could open up like laptops and use the weight of the laptop to hold the base in place.
You'd still need a way to deal with the laptop screen blocking the external monitor, though, unless you enjoy turning your head to the side. (We're already lugging two sizable pieces at this point; we don't want to add a keyboard to the mix on top of that.) Some variation of the tablet swivel-screen that covered the screen but exposed the keyboard would be nice.
Heck, easily portable 20" LCD monitors would be nice even just for carrying around with extremely small form-factor PCs.