Bill makes it too easy. By naming Microsoft's new concept product Mira, it's a quick leap to the joke, Mira, Mira! (which means "look, look" in Spanish). Mira isn't a product, it's a concept. It may be produced by ViewSonic and others by the end of the year. Whether it's useful, Microsoft doesn't care. Their job is to present something innovative. Except that other companies have offered and withdrawn similar products already.
MIra is a wireless touchscreen that's supposed to serve as a control center for a home's devices, but also be able to link up with a computer, all wirelessly. It's a nice notion, but cost and utility are probably the preventative factors from making this a near-term reality. Consumers won't spend thousands of dollars to turn their heat up and down. People who actually use computers aren't that fond of touchscreens. And so on.
What's more interesting is Moxi, a kind of everything-and-the-kitchen-sink home digital media device that will record TV digitally, tune programs, and distribute its service throughout a house via 802.11a. This is the first serious application of 802.11a's fat pipe and clear spectrum.
Moxi could be quickly transformative because it combines many features that consumers are buying in separate, expensive boxes, and it will be distributed by cable and satellite operators. The biggest disappointment with my new ReplayTV is that it has no capacity for wireless; I had to drill a new hole in my home to hook it into my broadband connection, which seems hopelessly out of date in the era of cheap Wi-Fi.
Meanwhile, the only real news at Macworld for the wireless community is the addition of Macintosh drivers for the Skyline 802.11b USB Adapter. The unit is now $150 and is a perfect fit for lots of situations in which a card slot (PC or PCI) isn't available, such as the original couple million iMacs. Or, perhaps, my wonky PC running Windows XP in which I cannot get an internal PCI card to work.
Computerworld on Boingo: the article mentions Sprint PCS's interest and investment. (An alert reader emailed me several days ago that Sprint PCS invested in Sky Dayton's incubator firm eCompanies, not directly in Boingo, however.)
It's a nice notion, but cost and utility are probably the preventative factors from making this a near-term reality. Consumers won't spend thousands of dollars to turn their heat up and down
I think the main reason this will not take off is that it takes you, even on a geek-ish log like this, more than 20 words to more or less explain what it is. it lacks that revolutionary improvement over what exists (like the cd, the cell phone, the internet) that makes everyone grok it 10 seconds and go: of course i need that.
also, it's still all vaporware and it's far from sure MS will be able to deliver on it. don't forget both at&t and upc (europe's largest cable operator) recently dumped MS as the software supplier for their set top boxes.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,18730,00.html?nl=mg
You say "The biggest disappointment with my new ReplayTV is that it has no capacity for wireless; I had to drill a new hole in my home to hook it into my broadband connection, which seems hopelessly out of date in the era of cheap Wi-Fi."
I'm also looking into purchasing a ReplayTV and Turtle Beach's Audiotron. The Audiotron lets you stream MP3's over an ethernet connection. Like the ReplayTV, it's got an ethernet jack, but no built-in 802.11b wireless capability. I plan to plug in an ethernet to wireless bridge. These bridges are designed for industrial appliances that have a ethernet jack, but need to be situated away from a wired connection. Until recently, these bridges were in the $400+ range. However, an update to the Linksys WAP11 access point now gives it the ability to act as an 802.11b client. You should be able to configure it and then plug it into your Replay to give it wireless capability to talk to your 802.11b access point.
Definitely a good idea. But you know that you need another WAP11 to act as your access point if you use one as a client. 3Com just shipped a 4-device Ethernet-to-Wi-Fi bridge that costs (unfortunately) $350 but is an efficient solution for the problem. It almost certainly will drop in price quickly.