Fortysomething Geek

In my first multi-monitor display post, I wrote about using the Retina iPad 3 as a high-res portable multi-monitor display for a laptop. Today, I am going to show you the same software running on Android's Ice Cream Sandwich with the wonderful Samsung's Galaxy Tab 2 7.0" Android tablet. It also works with other Android devices such as the Nexus.

Avatron makes the same Air Display available for Android on the Google's Play Store. I was looking for something similar to my iOS and I hit jackpot. The desktop client is the same and the app works and feels like the iOS counterpart. The client app works on both Windows and Mac OSX. Below are screenshots of it running in Mac OSX.

Set up is the same as before. You select your device (s) and adjust your secondary display arrangement.



And voila. Wi-Fi palette monitor; using the Galaxy Tab 2 as a secondary portable monitor. You can use the touch-screen as a virtual mouse as well.



A few things to note. With Ice-Cream Sandwich, you don't get the full screen. The virtual soft keys (home/back/menu) and task bar still exists. Hence, you lose some resolution compared to an iOS device.

1024x600 on the Galaxy Nexus
1024x540 on the Galaxy Tab 2
2048x1536 on the iPad 3 in Retina mode. (1024x768 other mode).

The only missing feature from the iOS version is virtual keyboard. Both have virtual mouses but with the iPad, you can pull up the tablet's keyboard to enter text or type within apps inside your Air Display monitor.

Next, the other issue is the inability to power multiple "Air Display" devices; meaning I am unable to use all my devices as 4th or 5th monitors at the same time.
I have some DisplayLink usb powered monitors and I can daisy chain up to 6 DisplayLink monitors to my MacBookPro. It would be nice to have a similar feature with Air Display.

Lastly, the refresh is rather laggy and slow. This is expected since the redraw is taking place over WIFI. The speed of your refresh depends on the speed of your WIFi network and your devices. Both my Samsung devices, in general, have poor WIFI connections. This doesn't bother me because I use these monitors as palette displays to show non-motion material. I use them mostly for displaying error logs, mail, and terminal windows which do not need fast refresh. Depending on your use case, this may not be ideal for you. Considering that the application cost 5,ドル the investment is low compared to buying and lugging extra monitors around.

And a word of advice. If you ever plan to use a WIFI monitor or even some sort of Remote Desktop (VNC/RDP/X11), always choose a solid color like dark grey for your background. It makes it easier on the refresh and redrawing.


Link: Air Display at Google's Play Store

This resolution needs to die. Seriously, it needs to go.

In my picture above, you have a 11" laptop and a 15.6" laptop both running the same awful resolution. It isn't so bad on the 11" and I would say it is appropriate for that screen size. However, if you go into any Best Buy, Staples, or Office Depot, 95% of the laptops are running that resolution. You have 15" quad core i7 laptops with blu-ray running that resolution. All that power wasted on that screen space. The HP 15.6" pictured above is an example of that. On that 15.6 HP, everything is blurry and fuzzy. The extra screen size offers no real improvement. You get the same working space. Pictures and text look the same but just bigger.

I have a 13" Macbook Pro at 1280x800 which is no better. At least that extra 32 pixels of vertical resolution does make a small difference.

I'm not suggesting that everyone goes out and get a 900p or 1080p screen. I think manufactures need to step it up and offer higher resolutions on at least 14" and 15" screens.


Some other reading Links:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/11/move-over-1024x768-the-most-popular-screen-resolution-on-the-web-is-now-1366x768/

http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/04/11/resolution.1024x768.not.most.popular.worldwide/

Read more »

There has been wild speculation that Apple will axe the slow-selling Mac Pro line. Over 16,000 people have signed a Facebook petition. Wild and rampant speculation on the Internet suggest that Apple wants pros to use iMacs instead.



The argument goes like this: Apple has been making loads of money on iDevices and they have no time for slow selling devices. The Mac Pros do not sell in high volumes like the other products. Basically, the MacPros have taken a back seat to iPads, iPhones and Macbook Airs. On the surface level, this makes a lot of sense for people. But, I am here to say they are WRONG.

Before I go into my argument, I want to remind people of a few things: Apple needs content and app developers for their iOS devices. With Retina displays of the new iPad and upcoming Macbooks, you need beefy workstations that can power possibly 4K (4096x4096) monitors. Furthermore, why would Apple be touting Final Cut's ability to do 4K video if all they have to sell are iMacs. Lastly, Apple's rumored acquisition of the Italian music editing startup Redmatica suggest they are still in the content creation business.

Now for my main argument.

The reason why Apple hasn't updated the Mac Pros in over two years is very simple. The fault lies squarely with Intel. Yes, it is all Intel's fault. Just like Motorola failing to provide updated G5 PowerPC processors in the past, Apple is at the mercy of their CPU supplier.

The Workstation Xeon class architecture has not been updated in over 2 years. Up to 17 days ago, Intel did not have dual socket Sandy Bridge processors until May 14 of 2012. Don't believe me, go to Wikipedia and Intel's product pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors#Xeon_E5_.28dual-processor.29
and
Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2420 http://ark.intel.com/products/64617

So all you guys who are claiming you can build Hackintoshes better than what Apple has been giving up for the past 2 years need to give it a rest.

A Quad/Six-core i7 is not the same class as a multi-socket Xeon. The highest available memory you can get on a i7-3930K processor is 32GB of memory. With the two year old Mac Pro architecture, you can go up to 64GB. The new E5-2420 Sandy Bridge Xeon can go up to 375GB of ram.

Now for folks who don't understand all this technical babble. I'll make it simple.

Xeon Class architecture allows system builders to build multi-socket systems. Meaning, you can have two CPUs on the same motherboard. You can have two six-core CPUs and your system will be seen as a 12-core processor. Simple isn't it?

For the past two years, Intel was slow on the boat. The consumer grade i7s could not be made into multi-cpu systems. Meaning, you couldn't go to Fry's Electronics and buy two i7 CPUs and put them into a motherboard.
To do this, you needed a Xeon Class system- CPU, Motherboard and architecture. Furthermore, XEON class systems are more industrial. They often run ECC protected memory.
A Hackintosh i7 will not be the same as a MacPro or any XEON class workstations from companies like HP or Dell.

Sure,the benchmarks of the consumer grade Sandy Bridges have been smoking some of their XEON server based counterparts. I won't deny that. However, I cant see how Apple could have produced a single socket Mac Pro, price it at 2,000ドル and call it a workstation.

They could have made a new line called the Mac Pro Mini. A mini-ATX styled Mac Pro like in the same vein as the PowerMac 8100 was to the Powermac9100. It would be a smaller box with less expansion. Possibly a single socket, 4 banks of ram, 1 drive bay and 1 PCI slot. They could have sold it at 1500ドル and I would be one of the first buyers. However, I don't have access to their sales so I don't know if that would have been a wise move.

Am I happy about the situation? No. But people need to evaluate the facts first. Until there is final word from Cupertino. everything is pure speculation.

Today, I won an ebay bid for a brand new Lenovo Thinkpad mini dock 3 and it brought back some memories. I am thinking about the convenience of docking at work and having my stuff all ready to go. No hassles of cables and clutter.

Unfortunately, modern day docking stations are simply port-replicators for convenience. In the past, they are way much more.

I was one of the lucky few to grab a few Touchpads during the infamous "Fire-Sale."
It has been 9 months of ownership and how has does it hold up? I'm still undecided.

First of all, the hardware is clunky and un-reliable. I bought one for my dad and it was sent in FOUR times for service. During the post file sale period, HP did not issue replacements. Each time they went in for service, my dad was without his Touchpad for weeks. His Touchpad is stock webOS so his problems were strictly hardware. My 32GB model has been sent in once. There is already a crack along the speaker edge. Moreover, the device is rather heavy. I owned all the generations of iPad and the Touchpad feels heavier than the 1st gen iPad.

At 99ドル-149,ドル I really can't complain. There were times I was tempted to unload them on Craigslist or Ebay. I wish I did because I could have gotten 300ドル or so for a 32GB in the early days.

As luck would have it, there were always something that made me keep it.

I'll list a couple of cool things.

I could run basilisk 2 to emulate a mac classic "in-color."


I installed Ubuntu on it. Running mySQL Administrator, Python, full desktop Chromium/Firefox was cool. WebOS version of CHROOT doesn't require a goofy VNC server like on Android. WebOS's preware gives you a native X11 server.