Portable Displays for Wireless PC Work

Nov. 15 -- In the age of computers, many people have turned from "couch potatoes" to "mouse potatoes."

Instead of vegetating around the living room TV, many addicts of the interactive digital box are now spending their home time huddled in front of the PC in their den or study room surfing the Web, paying bills, or playing games.

But Microsoft and computer hardware makers are developing a new class of devices that could let mouse potatoes spend more time outside of the home computer room — without leaving the PC behind.

At the annual Comdex trade show to be held in Las Vegas next week, Microsoft and computer display makers will show off so-called "smart displays."

Outwardly, they are similar to the flat-panel LCD devices that are becoming popular among PC users as thin and lightweight alternatives to traditional glass-screened computer monitors. But the key difference with these new display units is buried inside.

The Magic of 'Mira'

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At the heart of these new lightweight LCD displays is special software that Microsoft developed under the code-name "Mira." The program, now called Windows CE for Smart Displays, allows the displays to wirelessly communicate with any personal computer running the Windows XP Professional operating system.

How it works is fairly simple. The computer sends the data needed to create the icons and pictures for display using Wi-Fi, a wireless communication standard typically used to network different computers. The smart display picks up the data using a built-in Wi-Fi receiver and creates the images as needed.

The surface of the smart display is touch-sensitive, so a user can interact with the on-screen images by using a finger or an included stylus. Tapping on the screen would be equivalent to using an ordinary computer's mouse to start and stop computer programs and tasks. To type out an e-mail, the display can produce a virtual keyboard on its screen for users to tap on.

The smart display sends these input commands back to the PC for processing using the same Wi-Fi connection. The computer then wirelessly sends back the new view that needs to be produced as a result, just as if a physical cable connected the PC and smart display.