tablet or compact keyboard monitor as PC interface?

[TimDH]

Hi All,

I wonder if some of you have tried a very compact (physically) way to control your PCs. The idea of a standard keyboard, mouse and monitor controlling my PC in the living room to play music doesn't appeal to me visually. I was thinking of using my iPad, but then I'd have to use wifi, which Peter doesn't endorse.  I was wondering if any of you have experience with a tablet or very small (touch-screen?) monitor that would look very inconspicuous, but have a wired connection to the music PC.
Thanks!
Tim

[PeterSt]

Tim,

There's a topic (or posts) somewhere else about this. This has the iPad as a target. In brief : the real problem with this is a W7 bug, which I (by now) might be able to tackle.
Point is : no time for it so far ...

Peter

[Calibrator]

... but then I'd have to use wifi ....

Not necessarily Tim.

As a proof of concept, a few months back I loaded up XXHE on another PC on my LAN, which was cable attached (to the router), and controlled everything via VNC running on my Android phone and the PC. I haven't progressed any further since then, as I'm reticent to attach my music server to the LAN just at the moment, as it would obviously require the network drivers etc. being active all the time.

For casual listening though it may have merit.

Cheers,

Russ

[crisnee]

Tim, Here's something you could look into. A graphics tablet. I know it might seem odd but... I'm, for different reasons in the same boat as you, so I'd been thinking about similar things.

They're inexpensive and come in various sizes at monoprice.com (and it's the only place they're inexpensive). I have one but haven't really tried it out yet. It's probably best if you just check them out at the site as I probably won't be trying mine out with XX before the next version of XX arrives. And when that will be?

But anyway, as I understand it (and I sort of tried it but not with XX), you can click icons on it, that appear on your monitor. So it's much smaller than a keyboard, and should work pretty intuitively once you get the hang of it. It's wired like a mouse, by the way.

And there's another thing that works pretty well, but it involves infrared. It's a remote/mouse combo. The mouse part is what you want to use. It's a little wobbly pad kind of thing for moving the cursor, plus buttons and a few other functions. The pad is circular and has eight contact points at the eight points of the compass. If for instance you hit north, your cursor moves straight up. It takes a little getting used to, but it works fairly well. They're available at Amazon U.S. for 10 bucks or so.

-Chris