On Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:12:44 -0600, in message

cavelamb himself wrote:

Capt. JG wrote:
" wrote in message
...

"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...

Every once in awhile something interesting shows up in my inbox buried
under all of the other advertisements. Yesterday I received this one:

http://tinyurl.com/yrl8bb

It purports to be a wireless, waterproof, touch sensitive screen for
remote control and display of a PC. It looks like it might be
particularly useful for the cockpit of sailboats or on small power
boats. Apparently it is battery operated.

Anyone have any experience with something like this?

I have no connection with the product or vendor.

Pricy for what it is. I wonder about it's viewability in sunlight. If you
need to build a sunshade for it, you might just go ahead and build a water
resistant enclosure and throw a laptop into it.Very short battery life
which is understandable. There may be a practical application, but I can't
think of any.
I spoke too soon. I just thought of something. How about reading rec.boats
while taking a shower. Kidding of course.



I agree it's pricey, but the practical apps would include chart-reading and
general nav issues?


FWIW, I think it's too small for that...

My NAVMAN chartplotter has a 5" screen that is large enough to be very
useful. It was about half the price of this display and stands alone
with a much lower current draw. (less than 1 amp vs 6 or 7 amps to run
my notebook)

Still, I am intrigued by the product and hope it will come down in
price. It's right up there now with similar sized Raymarine displays.

Ryk

Victor Fraenckel wrote:

I always thought that it would be nice to have a hood to put over the
display like the early radar-scopes had. Sort of a truncated pyramid
thingy that was shaped to fit around your nose and eyes and make sort of
a light-tight seal. The screen brightness would not be quite so annoying
then. Ever hear of such a thing?

Vic

A polarized screen might just do teh trick.
Notice how narrow the field of view is on the PC versions.

Richard

--
(remove the X to email)

It's never too late to be the person you might have been.
George Elliot

Jack Erbes wrote:
Wayne.B wrote:
On Sat, 22 Mar 2008 21:25:52 -0400, Jack Erbes
wrote:

I don't have any experience with that one but it looks like it may
have something in common with the Panasonic Toughbook Wireless Displays.

Yes, I think that's it:

http://tinyurl.com/ycqf99

I already have an older Panasonic Toughbook laptop and it's a good
unit, surviving several salt water showers and one 3 ft drop. With a
remote display I could leave the laptop down below in a safer
environment or even run a more powerful desktop box.

The Toughbook Wireless Display is not really just a display, and it is
not a computer either. It is actually more like a PDA. It has 64 MB of
memory (not expandable I guess) and runs Windows Mobile. Then you're
using the wireless link and Windows Remote Desktop to see and use the
applications running on the other nearby computer.

So, unless the MapTech device is any different, you'd need to have a
nearby computer running your applications. But if it works it ought to
be pretty good what with the touchscreen and the bright display. I'd
still want to have a handheld GPS receiver or something for a backup but
that display would be good enough with something like Coastal Navigator
running down on the nav station.

The Windows Remote Desktop is a strange thing the first time you see it.
I had to call Symantec for some tech support last year and they were
running applications on my desktop from India while I sat and watched
them. Made me a little nervous.

That was under Windows 2000. As far as I know, you might need to be
running XP Pro or Vista to use the Toughbook Wireless Display.

Jack


I've actually installed and used one.

It is a very nice unit however it does have some issues.

1) Limited color depth, it drops your desktop color depth to 16bit
2) Limited resolution, IIRC 1024x768 or less
3) Odd network setup required.


Good points,

Its a great size.
Serial port on the device (the one I used had one anyways)
Very good stylus.
Decent range (WiFi)

The bottom line is that its probably too expensive.

--
Travis

On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:13:11 GMT, (Richard
Casady) wrote:

On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:34:04 -0400, Jack Erbes
wrote:

you'll find that those will intrude on your
night vision some even at the dimmest settings that lets them be useful.

Has next to nothing to do with night vision. Same thing is true in
broad daylight. When you have a relatively bright light shining
directly into your eyes it is more difficult to see dimmer objects.
Regardless of the actual ammount of light involved. It takes as much
as 45 minutes in close to complete darkness to get full night vision.
Ask any astronomer.

Casady

Forgot one thing. Once you have night vision, red light won't hurt it.
Even a little bit of white light and most of your night vision goes
away.

Casady