Does this or has this existed?

eddyr

eddyr

eddyr

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Not sure if its the right forum but I couldn't think of another subforum with the exception maybe of laptops, but functionally it seemed more suited here i think.

Has such a thing ever been produced or proposed where a laptop style device that features only a screen, keyboard and battery is capable of linking wirelessly to a desktop PC allowing access to the full processing power of the PC in a more lounge friendly portable device?

I have wondered this since I built my current PC several years back and although by today's standards it is no longer the beast it was in its prime it has frustrated me that there wasnt a method of accessing its processing power throughout the house.

If anyone knows of or has ever heard of a product like that, I would be greatly interested to know.
 
i know of systems where little linux boxes connected with a m, kb and mouse and use some sort of protocol to control much more powerful machines

i guess a netbook could run some sort of specialist linux distro and connect wirelessly to your powerful rig and control it remotely
 
Im not sure it would be the same type of thing im thinking of. Does the protocol you mentioned only allow the execution of software through commands?

The thinking was that it would essentially be a mobile wireless screen in a notebook formfactor with the extra space otherwise given to the regular laptop internals to extra battery capacity. Basically a wireless mouse, keyboard and screen as you might get them now all rolled into one.
 
Well basically any mobile phone, tablet and laptop can do this if you can run an RDP or VNC client on it. Not very well suited for things that change the image on the screen a lot (video/games) but regular number crushing will go just fine.

There is also this (brand spanking new):
but I'm 99% sure that's just an RDP/VNC session with perhaps a little extra for multi-touch gestures.
 
I too actually have thought about this, i never could find anything that could do exactly what i wanted it to do.

i wanted something that is kind of like remote desktop just that works a lot faster, so you can then basically play games over it.
 
Thanks for the clip Axeia, unfortunalty things that change the screen image a lot amongst more visually basic use was also part of what I had in mind.

Fewfe3 thats also what I was thinking, video/gaming and just general PC use through a mobile unit while at home, so im not constantly tied to the desk if I need to use the PC for working/entertainment for any long period of time.
 
Well then I think you're out of luck unless mobile networks massively increase in bandwidth or someone discovers some amazingly efficient compression algorithm for compressing moving pictures.
Neither seems likely to happen any time soon and even on a gigabit network VNC still doesn't feel quite like working on the device itself. On the other hand onlive and gakai (gaming in 'the cloud') seem to be getting a lot more positive reviews than I expected.
 
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Your right I checked the bandwith of monitor connectors and Single link DVI was in the range of 4Gbits after overheads accounted. It took me by surprise that it was that high.
So as you say unless its been compressed/encoded before transmission its not gonna be anywhere near enough over wireless networks.
Sigh, I shall dream on.
 
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