http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125...w=wn_tophead_3
Now someone should tell me what the best Pocket PC is so I can save my money.Whether he's wandering the Macworld show floor in San Francisco or sitting on a beach in southern Spain, he can call up his Mac in Vienna. Thanks to a remote, wireless connection, OS X runs as though it were installed on his Fujitsu Siemens handheld.
"No one believes me when I tell them I can do this. They think it is a screenshot," said the tall Austrian, who asked to be identified only by his nom de plume. "I can do whatever I can do with my Mac at home."
Teddy's Pocket Loox 720, which costs about $700 but is not available in the United States, has built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Thanks to near-ubiquitous Wi-Fi access, especially in Europe, Teddy is able to call up his PowerBook at home.
"Of course, I can do e-mail and web browsing using the Pocket PC software, but because it's Microsoft, it's bad. So I'm logging into my Mac OS X machine in Vienna," he said.
It's no speed demon, but Teddy can exert total control through his Pocket PC. He manages e-mail, browses the web and queues up TV shows for his Mac to record using EyeTV.
"It's quite fast, even on slow connections," he said. "You can't play games, but for normal desktop work, it's quite nice. And it's amazingly stable."
The only problem is the lack of a keyboard or mouse. To make things easier, Teddy grew his two thumbnails to tap out commands on the Pocket PC's teeny touch screen.
The Pocket Loox 720 is one of the first Pocket PCs with a full VGA screen (640 by 480 resolution), which makes remote browsing of a desktop computer practical.
"As soon as you have a VGA screen, your pictures look gorgeous. You see a lot more of the screen. Before, it is not possible to use a remote connection -- there is too much scrolling," said Teddy.
To access the Mac, Teddy installed a Virtual Network Computing, or VNC, client on the handheld and a VNC server on his PowerBook at home in Vienna. VNC is a standard, open-source protocol for network computing, with client and server software for dozens of platforms, including relatively obscure machines like the Newton.
Teddy works as a Mac consultant and writes a gadgets column for a glossy Austrian magazine. He's always out and about Vienna on his bicycle, and travels a lot: about one week out of every month.
"I'm never with my Mac at home," he said. "I'm always with my small devices.
"Here's my office," he added, indicating a fanny pack containing the Pocket PC, a digital camera and a palmOne Treo 650, which can also access the PowerBook but doesn't have the bigger screen.
The PowerBook is sitting on a fast broadband connection, and Teddy uses it to its full potential. It acts as a firewall and router, and a wireless base station for the apartment and garden. It's also a telephone answering machine and fax, and a digital video recorder.
Teddy has 800 GB of external hard drives for recording TV shows using EyeTV, a system that turns a Mac into a digital video recorder. He pipes video to a TV in the bedroom, and has hooked up an infrared control system to change channels.
If the PowerBook crashes when he's out and about, he calls his "server admin" girlfriend to reboot the machine.
"Everything is on the PowerBook," he said. "It's so easy. I can access it from anywhere in the world, and work on it as though I am at home. It's so easy and convenient. And I can't lose it."
Fredi
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