I've blogged a few times about how I think that Mira, Microsoft upcoming new Wireless tablet, is a loser. There's no question that it was born during the dot com heyday and not rethought since. It will fail and Microsoft will (once again) take three tries to get it right. Since Mira lacks a local keyboard or the ability to be used concurrently by different users, it's more of a "browse the web from the couch thing" than something useful. Still there is something interesting here: Let's Bring Back Terminals (but make them wireless). That's right terminals. Machines without local discs and I think that Apple should be the one to do it. Let me explain.
I recently did a very interesting experiment, I took an old, pretty much dead laptop (400 mhz celeron, 192 megs RAM) and installed Windows XP and a WiFi card on it. This is a machine that's been in my junk pile for a year or so now and isn't usable by normal standards. Still it can run a web browser and an IM client albeit slowly. Then I moved it upstairs to my night table, right next to my bed (no snide comments please). And, guess what, those early morning insomniac email checks? No longer have to go downstairs. Instant messages? Piece of cake. Best of all? My MP3 collection !!! The way I look at it is that between email and IM, having a terminal right next to your bed is just like having a phone next to your bed. It just plain makes sense.
So here's the product I'd like to see:
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Wireless Monitor -- Doesn't even have to be big; a 13" LCD could be fine
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Wireless Keyboard with built in mouse pad or trackpoint (preferred) Since you often use this sitting up, not in a desk chair, the keyboard needs to have the pointing device integrated.
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Ability to access web or non-web applications
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1 power cord w/ relatively small power brick
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Substantial, weighty base (perhaps empty that you fill with sand to save shipping weight) -- it doesn't matter when you knock your clock radio over. It does matter when you knock over your terminal
Depending on price, I can easily see a family buying 2 or three of these such as one for little Billy's room another for his sister and so on. The more I use PCs, the more I realize what a tower of babel we've created. PCs are just plain hard to maintain and storage is just a bloody nightmare. Having one main machine for the "house" and then terminals off it makes a lot more sense from a maintenance perspective than a machine for each family member, each of which has to get updated, configured, virus proofed, backed up, etc.
Here's another reason why you might want this for little Billy or his sister: Child Safety. As much as I am a civil liberties freak and very, very, very open minded, even I will admit that there is a lot of stuff out on the Internet that perhaps children shouldn't be seeing. When someone has their own machine with their own disc storage, it's a lot harder for Mom and Dad to know what's going on. You should also bear in mind that since parents these days are often being held legally responsible for their children's actions, this actually makes some real sense.
Note: I'm not disregarding the fact that little Billy may often know more about his computer than Mom or Dad. Still, while we'd all like to think that kids always know more about computers than their parents, it's not always the case. Not every kid is a hacker who can bust through security restrictions.
That's it. Terminals. Make sense to anyone besides me?
