detonate.net - This has potential...or not

MS is unveiling its new wifi monitor at Comdex this weekend. Essentially this allows for a "wireless" monitor. However, the article is extremely vague. Is the monitor battery-powered? Is the data transmission encrypted? Imagine sitting in your cube with a sniffer and decoding what's on your boss' monitor. What? You want me to work on Saturday? Sure...let me just email the screen caps of you browsing alt.sex.fetish.scat to the VP and then I'll write that in my schedule.

The Magic of 'Mira' 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.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/CuttingEdge/cuttingedge021115.html

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. But since Wi-Fi transmissions have a range of several hundred feet, a smart display owner could use the device almost anywhere in the home while the PC remains stationary.

Click the link for the rest of the story.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/CuttingEdge/cuttingedge021115.html