A Truly Wireless Tablet PC

A great idea in concept (and in science fiction TV shows/movies), the Tablet PC has just never taken off. A major cause is that the hardware has been too bulky to be used as a true paper tablet replacement, but thankfully some companies still haven't given up on the platform.

Toshiba demonstrated a notebook that allowed you to physically detach the monitor and carry it around with you, effectively using it as the tablet. The tablet received all screen data wirelessly over 802.11g from the base of the system (where the keyboard, CPU and HDD are located). The demonstration obviously worked, but we didn't get a feel for whether or not there was any perceivable lag when using the tablet.

The idea of a detachable monitor tablet makes a lot of sense as it addresses the form factor issue of tablet PCs.

Similar to the Seagate demo we saw earlier on at CES, Toshiba also had a Wireless USB/Ultra Wideband demo at their booth. The demo this time around was of a DV camera plugged into a base station rigged with a WUSB antenna. The DV camera then wirelessly streamed the video on its DV tape to a Toshiba notebook, also outfitted with a WUSB antenna.

Once again we have no idea what transfer rate was being achieved and although WUSB has a theoretical maximum of 480Mbps we would expect the real world transfer rate to be far slower in this case since it is streaming off of a DV tape.

HD-DVD: Twin Format Disc Canon and Toshiba Demonstrate SED TVs
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  • quanta - Friday, January 13, 2006 - link

    From page 8:

    quote:

    Like LCD and DLP technologies, SED displays are fixed pixel displays and there are three electron emitters per pixel. The downside to a fixed pixel display of course is that you end up sacrificing quality if you display content isn't at the same resolution as the native resolution of your display.


    Actually, that only exist if at least 1 dimension of display content dimensions isn't integer divisor of display's native resolution. Secondly, DLP can overcome this by shining at only the biggest subset of mirror in the DMDs that do not cause distortions, then use adjustable sets of lenses to perform zooming, with each set zooming at only 1 axis.
  • Kensei - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    Please do a review of this thing when it becomes available. I'd love to see how its output compares to Blu-ray and HD-DVD. I'm sure it's not as good... but just how much worse is what I'd like to know.
  • highlandsun - Thursday, January 12, 2006 - link

    Samsung has pretty good scaling technology, but it seems to me this is something you only need in your display. (And Samsung TVs do pretty good upconversion already.) So, kind of silly.
  • VooDooAddict - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    Raptor X.

    I feel so guilty. I'm drooling over a hard drive that costs more then a 7800GT.

    I've wanted a windowed Hard drive for ages though... but don't have the dremmel skills nessesary to add a window to an existing drive.
  • Questar - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    Nobody has the dremel skills. Drives are assembled in clean rooms. Beaking the seal will be the end of a drive.
  • Clauzii - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    I´ve seen a drive approx. a year ago on the net - modded with blue light - woring - 20Gig. Damn where was it....?
  • Clauzii - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    But also found this .. it´s nothing new .......
  • Clauzii - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    This: http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Transparent_20disk_...">http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Transparent_20disk_...
  • Clauzii - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    woring = working...
  • Eris23007 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link


    I've noticed lately that article text seems to disappear a few seconds after page load, frequently when one of the sidebar ads appears. Can't be retrieved except by highlighting it, moving the page back and forth (so it redraws), etc. Happened on a number of articles over the past week or so...

    IE6/XP-SP2

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