Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/12/new-battery-powered-portable-m.html
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What’s the utility of the touch screen? It’s been an option on the last couple of laptops I’ve bought and it’s been laughed out as an option instantly each time.
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I can’t work out what they mean by NTSC=72%. I am guessing they mean it has a larger gamut than NTSC. The logical thing would be to say Rec.709 video if it was, but couldn’t manage P3, but perhaps it cannot manage one of the corners of the gamut. The original NTSC red used to be distinctly orange, so that is an odd point of reference.
I am guessing it looks like an ordinary monitor, or Rob would have said something. Saying it was video-like would have been okay. Not saying anything would have been better than 72%=NTSC. Good job, market-bot, good job.
It has a ‘janky button-operated settings menu’. Well, does anyone know a monitor where the settings menu does not stink? You can call that ‘industry standard’ and not lie.
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So, I guess the era Kickstarted gadgets is not completely dead just yet? Or are we just going to wait and watch this fail to deliver on its promises, if not bomb entirely? If they don’t have patents I would expect them to be promptly undersold by Asian factories.
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I imagine it’s close to default, or very cheap, on smaller mass-market displays now. Just the way they make em.
I figure they’re putting NTSC’s gamut in there because the 1080p version isn’t fabulous on color reproduction so they want you to know that other things are worse.
So, it’s something like this with it’s own battery?
All you need to do is add a power bank like this.
That’s supposed to be the battery capacity of the screen- one single 5000mAh battery cell. And that’s probably an optimistic estimate of its capacity. You really should get something with more capacity- bigger power banks are really easy to find.
Really, I’d buy one of the above portable monitors and a larger battery right now instead of waiting for a cheaper Kickstarter. I already have a couple of power banks, so I wouldn’t even need to buy the battery.
I keep waiting for Microsoft to release surface displays, which would be similar to these but have their digitizer tech built in. i’d buy two portable laptop sized ones for travel and two desktop sized ones. if they worked with macos that would be a game changer for that ecosphere.
There is the Monitor Control Command Set; designed to allow the real computer to adjust the monitor over the handy basically i2c bus provided by DDC.
Unfortunately that substitutes the sheer jank of the usual OSD and buttons for obscurity and questionable interoperability between products and vendors(where it’s implemented at all; not guaranteed by any means).
I’m not entirely sure why; but Microsoft’s position seems to be that you can keep on waiting.
That is pretty much the only implication one can draw from the fact that the Surface Studio not only insists on including an unnecessarily cramped and feeble computer on what might otherwise be an interesting monitor; but has no support for video-in(unlike the iMac, usual standard bearer for the ‘nice screen, pity about what’s stuck to it’ genre; which at least can play external monitor).
Even if a dedicated monitor-only is deemed too obscure; Microsoft could have added video input; but have simply ignored that(along with Thunderbolt or USB-C in most cases) for several generations now.
Apparently not Modern or something.
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Yah, I kinda wish they didn’t. It’s fine on a tablet, where you don’t need so much fine control and speed, but on a real computer it just adds cost. If the idea is to give you a big screen so you can use your phone as a computer then you’re still going to need a keyboard / keyboard case to do any real work. At that point you might as well just get a Surface pro.
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