BBC. Mira, Microsoft's new portable digital screen/tablet technology that connects to a hub PC, will be “out by Christmas” for around $500. This is how Microsoft plans to soak up excess compute cycles on today's fast PCs: use XP profiles to allow everyone in the home to have a digital screen/tablet that connects to a hub PC. The key is multiple simultaneous users on the same hub for mail, multimedia, and browsing.
I suspect the vision is that there will eventually be a hub PC (HomeStation) you can put into a closet. Base stations to recharge the tablets for each user. Connections to roaming wireless networks for remote access to the home hub. Convergence with personal storage device technology to add dozens of Gb of portable storage for local playback of multimedia. Convergence with wireless phone technology so that you could use your hub's contact manager for easy communications management. Nice. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]