Portable PC screen

September 1, 2005 12:07 AM

I spend a lot of time at the computer. Sometimes, I'd like to sit in a nice comfortable sofa, and still point and click. Does anyone know of a "portable screen" that shows exactly what's on the pc screen, but wireless? A bit like a tablet PC without the PC...
posted by wibbler to computers & internet (8 comments total)

I dont know about a portable screen, but I have a wireless mouse and keyboard that I sit on my futon and use.
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 12:21 AM on September 1, 2005

Microsoft used to produce software for a product like this (I think Viewsonic made a models), but the idea died - it was far too expensive.

My advice: get a cheap laptop and a home wireless network and use remote desktop to control your desktop (though you may find yourself just using the laptop anyway).
posted by danhon at 12:52 AM on September 1, 2005

I second the cheap laptop. You can VNC to a remote machine and get a nice synergistic effect out of using it locally and a larger machine remotely. If you're patient and undemanding, you can baby a Pentium 1 250 MHZ machine into behaving more like a P1 combined with however large your remote machine is. And you can pick one up for less than 100 bucks.

Make that laptop a p3-500 slaving a much large remote machine or media PC connected to a TV, and you've got a nice rig.

The problem with most "thin clients" is that the "thin client" pretty much has to be a fully working PC anyway. It's really only semi-worth it to do "thin clients" in huge networked environments, or where the application at hand is so large and unweildy it runs better on a shared or dedicated monster server.

But for home surfing and multimedia an older laptop and a robust remote CPU or TV-enabled media PC is a wonderful setup. And flexible and reconfigurable and multitalented.
posted by loquacious at 2:30 AM on September 1, 2005

Danhon is talking about Microsoft Smart Display and the ViewSonic AirPanel. Both are discontinued, but they go for about $300. Though they're a bit rubbish and can't do anything a Tablet PC or laptop running Remote Desktop can't.
posted by cillit bang at 2:30 AM on September 1, 2005

Yes, buy a cheap laptop. I suggest one with a 12 inch screen so that the notebook itself isn't very big.
posted by furtive at 4:27 AM on September 1, 2005

PSP+VNC?
posted by bruceyeah at 6:37 AM on September 1, 2005

i use a laptop with vnc for the same stuff. vnc is not quite as smooth as working directly on a pc terminal. but it gets the job done.

however, i do surfing mostly on the laptop directly. the vnc is for pulling up music or movie on the TV screen from the remote PC. the wireless keyboard (i have gone through a number of them, except the expensive logitechs) are not quite as smooth or fast as i would i like them to be. i end up using the vnc connection. Also to use the HTPC screen on TV I need to switch inputs on TV and since I watch digital cable most of the time my TV tuner on the PC does not get those channels, and i do not like dangling IR blasters etc. etc..

at one point i thought of buying airpanel. it was too expensive. in the end a cheaper tablet may be what i would like, simply because of the nicer form factor.
posted by flyby22 at 6:56 AM on September 1, 2005

I used to dream of creating just the sort of product that you're craving, but I've given it up for now because the technology isn't available.

If you take an XGA screen (1024x768) with 24 bit colour and a bare minimum refresh rate of 30hz (that of NTSC video), you end up needing a wireless signal with 540Mb/s bandwidth (ignoring compression, which would add cost to the panel). The next generation of wireless networking will only support 100 Mb/s. Far too little.

To compensate, Microsoft and Viewsonic (and VNC, and X-Windows iirc) do not send the entire picture over the air, but instead send the underlying drawing instructions, which are considerably smaller. The drawback is that, rather than just a video display, you now have to carry around a mini computer, complete with memory, processor, and a copy of windows (the air-panel ran windows-CE), just to translate the instructions back into video. The need for all those components makes the the savings over a regular laptop dissapear. And the bandwidth limit would still prevent you from playing videos or games.

In sum, there won't be a very enticing portable display until somebody figures out how to send a lot more data wirelessly.
posted by Popular Ethics at 9:04 AM on September 1, 2005