ViewSonic AirPanel v150 Review at Ars Technica

Haxby writes "Ars Technica has a pretty thorough review of the ViewSonic AirPanel (15 inch model). You might recall that this device/design won 'Best of Comdex' in 2002, but as the review clearly shows, it's not really all that great, and it's way overpriced. The biggest problem is video performance: it sucks. Poor resolution and hideous rendering times (partly Microsoft's RDC's fault) make it next to useless. Is more bandwidth the key to making these things more palatable?"

RDC

[Anonymous Coward]

They must be doing something wrong, because it's normally quite fast [ripplestorm.com].

Ahhhh... but then again it's always fun to get an "M$ sux" quippy on the front page. I get it now. Of course if this was some open source software the reviewers would definitely be on crack. Not only that, they'd probably be in Microsoft's pocket and have an evil agenda.

No, that's OK. Don't thank me.

Re:agreed

[cowmix]

I hate to defend MSFT but *please* point out a better protocol than RDC for the same CPU and bandwidth considerations...

I use RDC, VNC and X all day.. and RDC works as well as the rest.

Re:agreed

[That's Unpossible!]

Actually in my experience comparing RDC, PCAnywhere, and VNC, RDC blows the others away in terms of the speed and responsiveness it exhibits. It destroys VNC in other areas (copy/paste integration), and even though PCAnywhere has some file transfer capabilities, you can transfer files pretty easily with RDC in two different ways: (1) Copy a file on one end, paste it on the other, or (2) set RDC up to establish mapped drives for your remote computer so that you can copy files back and forth using normal windows networking.

I only wish there was a good client available for MacOS X, as I would love to switch to mac, but use RDC heavily and need a client with all the features available in the windows xp/2003 version.

Re:Optimal Tablet PC

[ParadoxDruid]

I have an Acer Travelmate C100 Tablet PC (the first ones than came out).

I'm a college student, and it's served my needs VERY well for the above reasons.

*built-in Wifi card, so anywhere on campus or at home (with my Netgear wireless router), it's connected to the Internet.
*Remote Desktop Logon to my main Desktop works perfectly (when the desktop is booted in WinXP)
*I can click on "My Briefcase" and click "sync my files", and all my files I've modified or created that day at school are backed-up on my desktop.
On the other note: I don't even own a binder anymore. All my notes are on my Tablet. It's great. (Heck, some of my books are online, so my backpack is REALLY light)

I only wish My Briefcase was compatible with Linux (or a similar application was available), since my desktop is more often booted into Debian.

But I don't think I could ever go back to a Laptop that wasn't a Tablet-- once you get used to flipping your screen around and having a full size e-book reader, you never want to go back.

Tried, a Looong time ago

[conway]

This has been done a long time ago (early 90s) by Zenith -- the Zenith Cruisepad [purdue.edu]
That thing had a little AMD 386 chip embedded, and ran a Citrix WinFrame client, and your PC ran a WinFrame server.
I got one recently, to play with, and tried to get it to work, but couldn't, since the Citrix SW they use only runs on windows 3.1, which I can't even find an old disk of :)

Re:Killer feature: Detachable Monitor

[orpheus2000]

Viewsonic sells a dock that does exactly this. I know because I have both the airpanel 150 and the dock right in front of me. I've got the dock's VGA connected to the linux server, and when I want to move to another room, I remove the airpanel and connect to a windows machine. What sucks is that even though the airpanel is just a wireless RDC client, you can't use it to connect to other true RDC servers, just the one that has the Smart Display service installed, and it only runs on XP SP1. I've only got one of those so I'm a little limited.

All in all though, it's a really slick piece of hardware; good thing I didn't pay for it, my company is having me 'store' it for them. ;-)

Re:agreed

[Firehawke]

My own experiences with Remote Desktop are identical. Comparing even TightVNC and RealVNC to RDC shows a good jump in responsiveness by using RDC. It just feels a whole lot smoother and more responsive. I've played with the settings, done all sorts of tweaks, and while you can improve VNC, you can't match RDC with it just yet.

However, when cross-platform is needed, I still pull out my VNC client.

I wonder how many RDC exploits exist these days.

Re:LCD Quality (yes, an OT rant)

[Anonymous Coward]

LCDs don't have "refresh rates" in the same sense that CRTs do, but they do have update rates. The plus side is that while a low refresh rate (say, 60 Hz) on a CRT can be seen by those of us with good eyes as an abhorrent flickering, the same "update rate", when used on an LCD shows no flickering.

The only reason I pay any attention to maximum "update rate" on an LCD is that it gives me an idea of how responsive the panel is, regarding quick changes, like in video. It's especially important when using an LCD for frame-flipped stereo viewing. Most quality panels available now are responsive enough that this isn't an issue, but I remember the horrible ghosting that was present when trying to use a set of shutter glasses with a lower-quality screen; the ghosting completely destroys the effect.