Windows Sideshow Team - Auxiliary Displays (new laptop feature coming next year)

The Discussion

• 

  I wonder how much one of these are gonna cost when the hit the market, $5,000?

• 

  Andre Da Costa wrote:

  I wonder how much one of these are gonna cost when the hit the market, $5,000?

  
  
  It was said in the video, this stuff can be as cheap as 5 bucks. So laptops won't cost that much more. Look at WiFi if there is demand then it will sell.
  
  What about a detachable device, sort of a kinda mini pda?
  
  So how much could be stored, ie how far could I look back/forward in my calendar, could I store some MP3's so the laptop doesn't have to be powered on?
   
  What about heat? My laptop (m200) gets host, even when reading, with the proc and screen set low?
  
  Intreasting idea thu.....

• 

  Is the hardware platform supporting any other means of control buttons than what we see in this video? I am thinking about something like the iPod Click Wheel or so to speed up navigation and in UX.
  
  Could anyone please give a little detail on what's possible there?

• 

  The hardware decisions are up to the OEMs or the device manufacturers. We have prototypes and a few concept sketches of hardware and they use different button configurations, thumb scroll wheels etc. I expect that there will be some good innovation in this area.

• 

  i can bet you a hundred bucks that Apple will support this with their Leopard OS and tout it as an innovation...and they'll get away with it cause they'll have the ipod click wheel and the interface on the top...with support for Dashboard widgets...maybe MS shouldn't be this forthcoming with their developments!
  

• 

  alvifarooq:
  I can bet you a thousands bucks that you'll post this kind of post again and says it is the right thing to say... and you'll get away with it cause you will give various excuses that what you said is right.
  
  This kind of attitude will get you nowhere.

• 

  alvifarooq wrote:

  i can bet you a hundred bucks that Apple will support this with their Leopard OS and tout it as an innovation...and they'll get away with it cause they'll have the ipod click wheel and the interface on the top...with support for Dashboard widgets...maybe MS shouldn't be this forthcoming with their developments!
  

  
  
  Most likely Apple will put a slot on the new Macs that allows you to slid in an iPod Nano.  The Nano could be used as a "slideshow-type" device.  Better yet, a bluetooth iPod wouldn't even need to be docked inside the computer at all.
  
  You Microsoft guys should come up with a prototype for an MP3 player that can fit in the expresscard slot and be used as a bluetooth capapble slideshow device.  That kind of device could potentially be compatible with any laptop.
  
  Speaking of MP3 players, you should suggest to the people at Microsoft who are coming up with the plans for the "iPod competitor" that they actually put a full-size USB or firewire port on the device.  I can't tell you how convienient it is just to be able to grab any firewire cable and plug it into a 2-gen iPod.  IMO that is one of it's best features.  Of course, Apple ditched the feature because they wanted native USB support for PC compatibilty but someone needs to bring that feature back.  If the Microsoft iPod-thingy could download pictures and video directly from a digital still or video camera then you would have a hit on your hands.  Every digital Photography or videographer would want one.
  
  Being able to do simple hard disk video recording into an MP3 player is a dream for people in my profession.  Hard disk recorders like the Firestore are ridiculously expensive for the 20-80Gb drives they feature.  With Microsoft's operating system experience I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to make the device capture video (DV and HDV only about 3mb's per second).

• 

  kuaidang wrote:

    Better yet, a bluetooth iPod wouldn't even need to be docked inside the computer at all.
  

  
  
  Memory serves me correctly, Bluetooth is pretty darn slow, compared to USB 2.0 or IEEE 1394 (or "Firewire" for the zealots).
  
  

• 

  Ah! I can just hear those cruel IPod lovers erroneously claming that this feature is Microsoft's answer to Apple's latest craze.
  

• 

  Soooo... the display firmware is the same as on my SPOT watch, it has a mini-CLR and uses managed code...
  
  ...but to write to the display, I need to use Win32 and COM???
  
  <forehead slap>
  
  Could someone please create a nice, easy .NET wrapper so we can use a nice, easy .NET namespace to code for these things?  Pleeeease?  The irony is just too much to bear if it the firmware runs managed code but you write to the display using unmanaged code.  It would be like buying a house built by Frank Lloyd Wright and then decorating it with furniture from Wal-Mart and paintings of dogs playing poker.
  
  Also that bit about Outlook exporting to iCalendar was interesting & worth expanding on.  Is Vista's support for iCal going to catch up to OS X?
  
  

• 

  In the talk at PDC we had talked about the fact that there are native C++ / COM APIs integrated into Vista. I had also shown a quick interop sample.
  
  We understand that there is a large managed code audience who would like to use this platform. COM APIs can be accessed through managed code with a little interop shim. We will try to share sample code that makes this easier and look a managed code API in the future. Thanks for the feedback.

• 

  This is going to have "clickable" buttons rather than just the physical directional buttons, right? Because I'd imagine in the future hardware vendors would want to have touchscreens.
  
  It'd be sorta awkward to go through that keyboard centric ui -> mouse centric ui transition again...

• 

  A few points: 1. Waking up a laptop should not take anything more than 6-9 seconds tops. This is means fully able to interact with an open application or access a website via an 801.11 network connection. Which I do on my laptop. 2. Who uses a laptop to listen to music?? Isn't that what mp3 players are all about? Laptops are either being used to work on email or work on some type of document that falls within the Office document realm (spreadsheet, word processing, preso) And then of course there are those who use the laptop to watch a DVD movie, but even that use is diminishing with portable like the iPod that can play video. Scobelizer, you need to get a portable mp3 device if you are listening to podcasts on your laptop! So I'm not convinced that this auxillary display has been justified. I think someone in the display manufacturing business is looking at pushing more 3 inch displays. Bottomline it sounds like Microsoft is looking at creating a new platform and convincing folks that they really want to access their laptop via a 3 inch window. Hmmmm..I'm not convinced....

• 

  realitymeister wrote:

  A few points: 1. Waking up a laptop should not take anything more than 6-9 seconds tops. This is means fully able to interact with an open application or access a website via an 801.11 network connection. Which I do on my laptop. 2. Who uses a laptop to listen to music?? Isn't that what mp3 players are all about? Laptops are either being used to work on email or work on some type of document that falls within the Office document realm (spreadsheet, word processing, preso) And then of course there are those who use the laptop to watch a DVD movie, but even that use is diminishing with portable like the iPod that can play video. Scobelizer, you need to get a portable mp3 device if you are listening to podcasts on your laptop! So I'm not convinced that this auxillary display has been justified. I think someone in the display manufacturing business is looking at pushing more 3 inch displays. Bottomline it sounds like Microsoft is looking at creating a new platform and convincing folks that they really want to access their laptop via a 3 inch window. Hmmmm..I'm not convinced....

  
  
  Just don't use it then... there are people, including myself, who think it would be convenient to have, so don't pretend you can speak for us.
  
  It is just a luxury item after all. It's not like it's costing you your tax dollars to make.

• 

  Hey, just wondering... is the aux displays stuff still happening?

  Will I see laptops with aux displays next year?

• 

  Yes, this feature is still going to happen.  You will be able to buy the first version at the time of Vista launch.