What I -really- want

… is a workhorse desktop computer that has a high-speed wireless connection with a tablet – something powerful enough to let me edit video from the couch or watch DVDs that are playing on the desktop. Something where all the number crunching is happening in a central place, but the data connection is fast enough for real-time video or high speed rendering.

~ by Skennedy on April 23, 2009.

Posted in Uncategorized

6 Responses to “What I -really- want”

  1. That can totally be done with X-Windows. I used to do it with an ancient ancient laptop and a frankenputer so that I could use mail, browser, IM etc on a laptop that could barely work with windows 95. So the problem there is that I suspect that the apps you want cannot run under Linux or WINE. Ah well.

    pfrank said this on April 24, 2009 at 12:24 am

    • What sort of transmission medium was it?

      atdt1991 said this on April 24, 2009 at 12:52 am

      • it was an old slow wireless connection. 11Mbps I think.

        pfrank said this on April 24, 2009 at 12:59 am

        • there is much magic that can be done with X. my favorite is to have two computers, but one mouse and keyboard, and you can simply move the mouse off the right side of one desktop and it comes onto the left side of the other.

          you might be able to do something like what you want with vnc on windows via 802.11g, but your biggest issue will be the graphics card. its very difficult to get a typical GPU to output rendering to the network, rather than to its own monitor. I hear nvidia is cooking up something with cloud-based rendering, but thats not consumer-ready yet.

          blondbaron said this on April 24, 2009 at 1:36 am

    • Seconded on X-windows. For the wireless connection, Bluetooth can go 3Mbit/s, and 802.11n wireless can sustain 108MBit/s. That should be plenty fast.

      clayfoot said this on April 24, 2009 at 3:14 pm

  2. By tablet, are you referring to a drawing tablet? If so:

    http://www.wacom.com/graphire/6x8_bt_tech_specs.php

    Then all you need is a Bluetooth 2.0 card in your desktop.

    If you’re referring to a Tablet PC, I believe you can pair one to a desktop over a Wi-Fi connection with Remote Desktop and be able to use the pen as a mouse control. I don’t know if it’d retain the pressure sensitivity that way, though.

    If you can put up with a cord: http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/showthread.php?p=101460 It’s a Wacom Cintic, but it cost a cool $grand last year. I don’t think there’s a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth version, but if there was one brace yourself for sticker shock.

    — Steve doesn’t really know much about this, but can fake it real good.

    anton_p_nym said this on April 24, 2009 at 1:42 am

Comments are closed.