Good idea or not?

Author
Discussion

paulrockliffe

Original Poster:

15,639 posts

226 months

Friday 29th June 2012
quotequote all
At the moment I have a proper powerful PC that I use for most stuff, a HTC One X that I use when I'm out and about and an iPad (1) that I generally use in front of the TV. At the moment I don't really need the iPad, it's only plus point against the One X is that the battery lasts a lot longer.

So I was thinking, if I didn't have the iPad and wanted something to use infront of the TV that wasn't One X sized, I wouldn't be able to justify the purchase price of the iPad as I'd be paying for loads of hardware that I don't really need, all the processing power, ram, features etc.

What I need is a touch screen that connects to the WiFi network and through that to the PC, the PC runs a Windows session on the touch screen and sorts me out that way. No ram, no whizzy processors, no bluetooth, no 3G, no GPS. Should be cheap, should be light, should be really useful. Would work really well with Windows 8 as only the Metro (Surface) interface needs to be served up to the display.

Make it cheap enough and you can start embeding smaller screens in stuff around the house for controlling stuff, or in music centres etc.

Crap idea, or not?

Famous Graham

26,553 posts

224 months

Friday 29th June 2012
quotequote all
Don't see why not.

I had a similar idea about 8 years ago, albeit with dumb terminals hidden in the walls and a web application running off a server in a cupboard somewhere.

Wrote half of it, as I recall, but then lost interest when I started investigating the price of touchscreen flatscreens.

It's certainly viable.

I might resurrect that project, actually...

Blown2CV

28,697 posts

202 months

Saturday 30th June 2012
quotequote all
i think there are movements towards this, as you don't even need a windows PC at home, and can use infrastructure hosted elsewhere e.g. the dreaded cloud