A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

I am one of those people who is cursed with a steady stream of million pound (or euro, dollar, whatever) ideas but no know-how/ time/resources/ambition to actually patent them, develop them, fund them and gebnerally make them happen.

Therefore I have decided to give them away for free, in the hope that *someone* will make it happen, and I can at least get to see it built, even if someone else profits. So here's my current favourite. It's a desktop/laptop hybrid.

Here's the pitch:
In this age of wireless internet, laptops are great, even if you never leave your house: You can surf on the sofa, browse in the bath... you get the idea. However laptops have their downsides:
- You can't pull out a graphics card or processor and slot in a new one as easily as you can with a desktop, so they quickly go out of date.
- They are bloody expensive to boot.
- Battery life limits just how "wireless" these machines can be.

How to get around these problems? Build a hybrid!

You'd have two parts: Part one is the base-station. It has a traditional PC case with standard PSU, UPS, motherboard, wired lan, graphics card, sound card, storage, DVD-ROM, expansion ports and, crucially, a wireless network access point. No screen as standard (although you can plug one in if you want), ditto keyboard and mouse. You can hide this in a cupboard or up in the loft, because you won't need to see it very often. This also means it doesn't have to compromise on performance by being particularly pretty or quiet, unlike some new desktop systems coming out now.

Part two is a large, lightweight laptop screen, connected to a wireless card that talks to the base station. It also has keyboard and mouse (or other input options- tablet for instance), speakers (optional - A better option would be a widget to stream sound output straight to your stereo), a few USB ports, a battery, and just enough logic to work it all. No hard drive. No super-hot-processor. Not even a graphics card! All it does is (via lots of clever custom hardware and software) wirelessly transmit any input straight back to the basestation, and then stream the basestation's graphics/sound output across the network and onto the screen. It's one PC broken into two pieces, but held together by wireless glue. I think current Wlan technology ought to be quick enough for this. As little work as possible is done at the screen/keyboard end, thus reducing power overheads and extending battery life. You also get the benefit of being able to cheaply and easily upgrade the base station's hardware and see the results on your portable screen. Different sized screens from handlheld to tabletop would be available for different tastes and budgets, and all would of course be designed to be as ergonomic and comfortable as possible, so you can have it on your lap or hanging on a wall or stood up on a desk or whatever. If you wanted to go further you could break the mouse/ keyboard off as well and have them wireless components, but I think then you are in danger of loses bits and pieces down the back of the sofa.

Of course the downside is that if you take your screen out of range of your wireless network, your toy becomes useless. Well, for people who are bothered by this, there is a solution: Part three, an optional portable base station! Something more like traditional laptop technology with processor, harddrive etc that clips on to the screen part when you need to go roaming, converting it into something very much like a proper laptop.
The advantage of this two-part option over a traditional laptop (apart from the advantages when using it at home) is that when you want to upgrade the "roaming" portion of your system, you don't need to shell out for a new battery and screen (two of the more expensive components in laptop design). You could also save money by having a basic, low-cost, low-spec system for roaming and saving all the high-spec toys at home.

So there you go. I know we have lots of geeky people here, and even some people in the industry, so go make it! I'm not claiming copyright or patents or anything at all- if you've read this post the idea is now all yours. However, if you do build this thing and make some money from it, it would be nice if you'd remember little me and send me one of the first ones off the production line! I'll have the high-spec one with the 19" screen, please http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

I like it!
Lower power usage also means less heat in your lap.

I had my old thinkpad laptop hooked up to a power meter a while ago, and I noted (at 12v I think maybe)

0.7 A idling (idle CPU, Memory, power conversion losses, video/audio cards, etc)
an extra 0.1 to 0.2 A when the CPU was going.
0.3-0.5 A for the LCD & backlight, depending on brightness setting.
About 0.5 A for HDD and/or CD activity. Plus a spike when they first spin up.

If you got a dedicated wireless circuit to blindly feed data back and forth sorta like a beefed-up wireless mouse, it would probably sip the juice, and the back light could be your biggest drain.

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

I've never had a laptop so I wonder, why are they expensive to start? Do they use up alot of the battery?

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Sorry, bad wording on my side. I didn't mean 'boot' as in 'boot up a PC.' It's a phrase that may not be used much outside the UK.

Read the sentence as
"on top of all that, they are bloody expensive."

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Hey, even better than an LCD screen, how about one of those pseudopaper things? It only uses power to change the picture, and the brighter the light in the room the easier it is to see.

You know, with the tiny balls with ink on one side that get rolled back and forth by electrics or magnetics, or something like that?

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Sorry Dogscoff. I actually did know what you meant (Australian is closer to British than American), I just thought considering we were talking about computers the similarity needed mentioning. My sense of humour runs along the lines of questioning absurdities deadpan. I could add an emote but, well, i'm not a very emotional person http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

RW: I did suspect but decided that my wording could have been better.

SJ: Good suggestion, I can't wait for that stuff to really become common. As it starts to replace monitors, and as monitors start to replace TVs, i think they will be responsible for major savings in power all over the world, which will be good news for everyone. Also, books made with reprogrammable paper! How cool is that?

Somehign else that just occurred with my original idea: Universities, schools and the like could probably save a packet on IT hardware: They just need a few uber-servers that can run a stack of applications at once, and then students can bring in their own screens.

Also on-topic: How about integrating one of these into it instead of a keyboard: http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/proje...ard/index.html

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Well, you've reinvented the 40-years old dumb console, like those IBM room-sized machines had, *but* the idea to "wireless" them is great indeed !

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

This is an idea I've kicked around for a long time as well when I noticed that my laptop probably never gets's used more than about 50ft from one spot in the house. I'm kind of suprised not to have seen it done. There are wireless LCD TV's on the market where the TV tuner is in a base unit which beams the video signal to the battery-powered LCD screen. You could actually rig something up with one of those as a proof of concept. Just need a video card that hooks up to a TV video input. Add a bluetooth keyboard and your in business. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Maybe there is some technical reason you don't see wireless PC monitors? Would the amount of signal going through the video cable eat up too much bandwith to be done wirelessly and be practical. Have you ever noticed that the video cable is always much thicker and stiffer than the mouse and keyboard cable? There must be something different about the signal.

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

It's a great idea...but I have a feeling that geoschmo might be on to something. You would think that there would be a significant loss of performance if you take the wire out. Then again...who knows...marvels of modern technology and all...

Then there's always this: Build a desktop with a "convenient" carry handle and slightly longer than average cables then market it as "the amazing portable desktop!" and quietly disappear when the support line starts ringing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Streaming video is very bandwidth intensive. Wifi B can barely handle low resolution internet videos. Wifi G is a little better, and can usually stream 320x240 or 640x480 video files tolerably. I can't imagine it working well with high resolution video streaming, though. Any reasonable desktop resolution (1024xY or higher) might be too much for it to handle smoothly. Sending back input data doesn't use much bandwith, so that part probably isn't an issue.

Those small LCD screens probably have fairly low resolutions (compared to what you would want to run a computer at normally), which is why they can work with Wifi <N. When Wifi N becomes finalized, dumb Wifi consoles might become more practical.

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Within the next couple of years you will see an entire industry crop up simular to that of the cell phone industry, where PC will all come equipped long range wireless capabilities and people will be able to subscribe to a wireless network and be able to connect no matter where they are. I know sprint is working on this system now.

As it stand most laptops have limited range with what they are built with now, you can plug a cell phone into them and get access over a cell phone network.

So the next logical step would be to have a dedicated independent broadband wireless network available for people who want to stay "wired" wherever they may be.

Hell I would love to see this service offered. Give up the DSL and go with a truly wireless and secure broadband ISP. This way I can sit at the beach and be able to go on line in the evening after a day of riding.

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Just to add some concrete numbers, streaming 1080i video will take about 1.5Gbit/sec bandwidth. That is currently beyond the capability of standard wireless technology. However, adding in a chip that can do hardware MPEG decoding should reduce the needed bandwidth to on the order of 300Mbit/sec. Which is still outside the range of the 54Mbit/sec of current standard wi-fi (802.11g), but is within reach for the draft 802.11n standard. As long as there is dedicated hardware encoding and decoding to prevent taxing the general CPUs, it should be do-able soon-ish.

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Soon we will have USB 3.0 which will be a wireless standard that has the same transfer rates as USB 2.0 has over wires and is deisgned to work with stuf like this. I am afraid its planned range may not be enough for this.

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Can you provide us with a source for that info, CW?

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Can't you basically do this with a PDA running Remote Desktop Software to access your base PC?

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

No. You can use remote desktop/vnc to access a PC from a laptop too, but neither one is a solution to the problem at hand. You can't do much with hardware video streaming over vnc/rd. They can display the slow rate software video layer fine (the windows desktop), but they have much trouble with high frame rates (such as video files and 3d games).

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Remote Desktop is a little different from video streaming or VNC. Video streaming would be taking a fixed framerate capture of the remote screen, and VNC takes a series of screenshots and JPEG compresses them to send over to the viewer (no guarantee of fixed framerate). Remote Desktop, however, sends the actual Windows API messages to the client as well as the base machine. So, it would require a bit more computing power at the receiving end, but would lower bandwidth because all that would be needed to be sent is the theme information at the start (what color are titlebars, etc.), and the information Windows uses to set up a window. The result is instead of sending a picture of a 500x500 empty window that has a titlebar saying "Hello, world!", you send the messages Windows sends to create a 500x500 empty window with the same titlebar. The result is a much snappier response compared to VNC/video streaming for the interface (especially the mouse position), while having similar performance to sending something like a JPEG being displayed. --edit: or playing a movie, or a 3D game... you get the idea.

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

3d games don't do much at all with the win32 api though...

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Oh okay. So the problem then is using existing technolgy for the display and waiting for compression and wireless technologies to catch up.

What I need for away from base computing is pretty much limited to browsing and ebooks. From the original post:

"Here's the pitch:
In this age of wireless internet, laptops are great, even if you never leave your house: You can surf on the sofa, browse in the bath... you get the idea. However laptops have their downsides:
- You can't pull out a graphics card or processor and slot in a new one as easily as you can with a desktop, so they quickly go out of date.
- They are bloody expensive to boot.
- Battery life limits just how "wireless" these machines can be."

Battery life is the real limit here. Valve are predicting the end of the GPU with increasing numbers of CPU cores so video cards are moot long term. I can also replace my CPU add memory etc to my main PC and not have to upgrade my wireless screen, right? But a 15 inch TFT is for buttons these days so the screen is becoming one of the cheapest, commodity, items in the set up. But wait there's more... wireless transmission speeds are changing every 18 months or so. Not as bad as with grafix cards but getting there. So who's going to settle for an old slow screen when there's a new faster one out with a better response time and more vibrant colours? Come what may there'll be an upgrade cycle.


Not convinced traditional gaming needs to be mobile anyway. How do you do mouse and keyboard with a lapscreen(tm)? Heck, if you want wireless gaming just buy a DS. In fact just buy a DS anyway, those things rock.

Oh and if we're not talking gaming so much then yeah PDA with RDP. Or a laptop since they're also a lot cheaper than they used to be.

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Certainly there would be an upgrade cycle, but it would be the cycle of the desktop rather than the laptop. Laptop upgrades typically require whole machines. You can do a little bit with PCMCIA cards, but its nothing compared to the piece-meal upgrading you can do with desktops.

You would do mouse and keyboard with a mouse and keyboard. They would either be wired to the screen, or wireless in their own rights. TFT on-screen keyboards are terrible, terrible input devices that shouldn't be considered.

You could make the screen have a PCMCIA card slot for the wireless adapter, making it updatable too. 0 need to stick with obsolete wireless tech in that case. Monitors can last a long, long time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: A million-[insert currency] idea: For free!
 

Hence my saying that Remote Desktop would have similar performance to streaming video or a VNC connection when you're using a 3d game. In that case, all three are essentially doing the same thing (grab screen image, optionally compress, send), the only differences are in how the image data is sent.