[LeeG]

I was just looking around at amazon, and I noticed this product by viewsonic Here - yeah it costs a lot, and I am sure the scaled down windows operating system leaves much in the way of user eXPerience to be desired, but it seems to have accomplised something we don't yet have in any form for the mac platform. Airport enabled access to your computer via an LCD panel.

True, this is an early version (and pretty pricey), but I was surprised, as this is INNOVATION coming from the windows world. This is a move towards the digital hub that we have not seen yet from Apple. Everyone got excited about a new DLD - that never materialized. Meanwhile, as Microsoft improves this SmartDisplay technology and LCD prices still fall, and tablet sales improve this will be a reality.

Is this a needed (or eventual) hardware aspect of the digital hub that the mac platform is missing or falling behind on? For that matter I have heard people mention imaging built into OSX that would be able to display desktops on remote monitors, where the monitor only had to process the quartz display info, while all processing was done on the mac - it would seem that this is exactly what microsoft has not achieved with its technology.

The idea of a pervasive computing experience at home (and work for that matter with regard to collaboration) accessed by different devices, and not requiring a user seated at a computer - that is the digital hub, no?

Where do you all think this will go? Does apple need a "digitalHubDisplay" (DHD)?


Lee

[BkueKanoodle]

If your talking about the Viewsonic Airpanel, then no it will not work on the mac. The reason being is that it uses Microsofts RDP 5.1 protocol to talk with the desktop computer. Actually it is nothing more then a Windows CE .net large format PDA that establishes a terminal server session with Windows XP. Don't feel bad about it not working with your mac though, be cause it won't work with Win 9x, or Windows 2000 either. In fact, because of this requirement, it comes with a copy of Windows XP

Now if you really wanted it, and you wanted to run it on a mac, your could always run XP in Virtual PC, but that would have horrible performance, and besides, what would be the point.

Having said that, it is very cool. I got one a week after I got my new ibook, and between the two I haven't actually touched my Toshiba 2 ghz XP laptop in almost a month. The only problem was I got 2 new toys in such a short time, I don't know which one to play with.

I've been using my mac at my desk and carry the Airpanel with me when I walk through the hall. I am the IT director of a Casino, and its nice to be able to access my desktop computer walking through the halls. People always grab me to fix something as I go through the facility, and I can whip out the airpanel and connect to any server to fix their problem standing in the middle of the gaming floor.