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Smart displays: Philips versus Viewsonic

Philips Desxcape 150DM and Viewsonic's Airpanels V150 and V110 go head to head in this battle of smart displays.

David Fearon, Personal Computer World 16 Jun 2003

The idea of the smart display is reminiscent of the old concept of client-server computing with dumb terminals, where a large server or mainframe would be shared between lots of users via simple workstations with a green screen, a keyboard and a network connection.

The difference is that the dumb terminal has now been replaced by a pretty powerful handheld computer with a modern portable operating system, a colour TFT screen and a wireless network connection. And the only person using the server - which is your home PC - is you.

The result is the new Windows-powered handheld Smart Display. The idea is to give you wireless access to your PC, as though you were sitting in front of it, from anywhere in the home.

The operating system in question is Microsoft's Windows CE for Smart Displays, the latest version of the handheld OS. Like its other recent portable PC innovation, the Tablet PC, smart displays are very much a Microsoft software initiative, with manufacturers following the template Microsoft has provided for the hardware.

The initial result is a trio of displays from two manufacturers, Viewsonic and Philips. The three models are pretty similar: all are tablet-style devices with a touch-sensitive screen and no integral keyboard; they have integrated TFT displays and 802.11b wireless local area network (Lan) adaptors.

Philips' 150DM and Viewsonic's V150 have 15in screens, while the Viewsonic V110 is a smaller device with a 10in display.

Smart displays can only be used in conjunction with a host PC running Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1 installed, since the PC needs to be running the brand new Smart Display Services.

In light of this, all three include an upgrade version of XP Professional with the new service pack. They also require a wireless network of course; a small USB-powered wireless adaptor is included with each screen or you can use your existing 802.11b adaptor.

Once Smart Display Services are installed on the host PC, the wireless network is configured and you've set up an account on a smart display, you're presented with an XP-style Welcome logon screen.

Log on to the host PC via the display and, after a short pause, the desktop of that machine is transferred to the display, and that's it. You can pick up the display, wander round the house and use the desktop machine anywhere, just as if you were physically sitting in front of it; everything happens over the wireless network.

Even sound is routed to the display. The only sign that the display itself has a mind of its own occurs when pressing the input panel button at the right of the screen.

This produces a small window allowing you to tap in text via an on-screen keyboard, or write it with the included stylus and let the integrated handwriting recognition engine do its stuff; it's deliberately been made to look very similar to Windows XP Tablet Edition's input panel.

The only drawback comes if you've set your PC's look and feel to the classic Windows appearance.

Because the input panel is generated by the smart display itself, it has no idea what your PC's preferences are and the panel can only be shown with the standard XP colourful cuddly look.

Although the transfer rate of 802.11b wireless networks is fast, it's not remotely near fast enough to update a full graphical display at 60Hz or above.

So, rather than pouring graphics data down the network and clogging it up, Smart Display Services running on the host XP machine sends specific windowing commands, only transmitting raw graphics data when necessary.

This works well for the standard windows-based things like web surfing and email, although animation effects, window dragging and scrolling can be a little sluggish.

But it completely falls down when doing anything more graphics-intensive. You can't play games or stream video through a smart display; the update rate slows to a crawl, if it works at all.

Monitor quality
In addition to their smart display abilities, the Philips and the larger Viewsonic V150 units act as normal monitors when docked into their base stations and connected to a desktop PC via the analogue video or DVI output of your graphics card.

When used in this way, both are acceptable but not exactly stunning given the price: native resolution is a standard 1,024 x 768, and contrast and viewing angle are slightly reduced by the extra transparent layers required to make the screen touch-sensitive for stylus operation.

As soon as you pull them out of their base stations they switch over to Windows CE and you can log in to your machine via Smart Display Services.

The Viewsonic V110 has no standard monitor connection and can act only as a smart display over a wireless link. It still has an optional base station though, to which you can attach the mains power supply and hook up a keyboard and mouse via two USB ports; these ports are replicated on the unit itself.

The Philips and Viewsonic V150 also have two integrated USB ports, replicated on their base stations.

Both Viewsonic models sport a thumb-operated rocker pad and mouse buttons flanking the screen, to supplement stylus control. Instead of this, the Philips has a stylish full-size wireless keyboard with integrated touchpad, but as an option that will set you back another £59 inc VAT.

Portable power
Despite being relatively powerful portables in their own right, all boasting 400MHz Intel Xscale processors and 64MB of SD-Ram, WinCE for Smart Displays won't allow you to use the units as PDAs or standalone handheld computers.

When disconnected from a remote PC, they revert to the Dashboard logon screen, prompting for connection to whichever accounts have been set up and showing battery level and network reception. A single Settings icon gives access to preferences such as power save mode and wireless network accounts.

Battery life was good for all three displays, but the Philips won out, managing about four hours of use at full brightness with power-saving features turned off. The Viewsonics both managed around three hours.

For web surfing or email sessions of an hour or two you'll never have a problem, as long as you remember to pop them back into their base stations afterwards.

Roaming range for all three displays was excellent, allowing us to wander more than 30m away, and there was no perceptible performance loss even with two walls between the smart display and the PC. Unless you live in a mansion, reception shouldn't be a problem anywhere in the house.

The smart display specification is tightly controlled by Microsoft and consequently there isn't too much difference in function between the three units.

One area of variation was the effectiveness of handwriting recognition via the input panel. It's moderately successful with the Viewsonic displays, although we still resorted to tapping out web addresses via the graphical keyboard, but the Philips' recognition was abysmal.

This is not because its recognition engine is any worse - it runs the same software as the Viewsonics - but because the touchscreen on our sample was, to say the least, temperamental.

The touch-sensitivity threshold seemed to be too high, so attempting to write text in the recognition area resulted in broken letters that the engine had no hope of recognising.

No amount of practice or adaptation of pen technique improved the situation. The surface of the screen was also rougher and felt less fluid than the Viewsonic's.

Once we got down to using the displays for any length of time, we much preferred the 10in Viewsonic V110 to the two 15in units. For the kind of things you'll be doing with a pen-based display, the lower 800 x 600 resolution is no handicap, and the smaller size is far more comfortable and tactile.

We found that using the larger units while standing up resulted in arm ache after about 10 minutes. In fact, all three are remarkably heavy: the Philips and the Viewsonic V150 are around 2.5kg, while the V110 is still 1.25kg.

Given that you can easily find full-blown sub-notebooks at under 1.25kg, the extra weight is something of a mystery.

Despite initial reservations about the whole concept, we've found ourselves quite taken with the idea of smart displays. The notion of having a small, unobtrusive display to access your main PC in the kitchen, living room or bedroom (or all three), without taking up space or cluttering up the place with wires and other gubbins, is tempting.

The only thing stopping us recommending them wholeheartedly is, of course, the price, which is far too high for what is basically an average-quality extension monitor, smart features or no smart features.

You could buy a full notebook with wireless Lan for these prices. But keep watching: if smart displays become as popular as we think they might, the prices will plummet.

In fact we'd be willing to wager that, before too long, desktop PC packages will start being sold with a standard monitor plus an extension smart display as standard.

PHILIPS DESXCAPE 150DM
Price: £999 (£850 ex VAT) including base station; £59 (£50 ex VAT) for wireless keyboard

Contact: Philips 0870 900 9070
www.philips.co.uk

Specifications:

VIEWSONIC AIRPANEL V110
Price: £1,018 (£866 ex VAT) including base station

Contact: Viewsonic 01293 643 900
www.viewsonic.com

Specifications:

VIEWSONIC AIRPANEL V150
Price: £1,278 (£1,088 ex VAT) including base station

Contact: Viewsonic 01293 643 900
www.viewsonic.com

Specifications:

www.v3.co.uk/2044515
This article was printed from the V3.co.uk web site
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