Wall-mounted computer?

[RedFox1]

We're looking for a display to mount on a wall in our cafeteria; the plan is to run a looping PowerPoint slideshow to show company information.

We were hoping to find an all-in-one computer/display to spare us the need to hide a PC somewhere nearby. We found these: http://www.idexdisplays.com/display.htm

But those are expensive...almost $8,000 each.

We're hoping to set up three of these information terminals.. We've been allocated around $2,000 for each terminal ($6,000 total) to do this.

Any ideas?

 

[Carbonadium4]

HOLY F, the other thing you can do is get the screen but run video over cat5 to that screen.. let me see if i can find the links..

 

[DaveSimmons]

$2,000 each? will that even get you a plasma display by itself? (Last I checked they were still $3K).

I doubt you'll find a plasma + PC for anywhere near that.

$2,000 each would get you a 21" hires LCD and a cheap PC, or a small tablet PC (10-15" LCD).

 

[RedFox1]

The video-over-cat5 idea sounds interesting....we've got plenty of unused cables running around.

For $2000 we're probably limited to 21" LCD displays. If it comes down to using displays attached to workstations, I can salvage old workstations for the job. We've got our hearts set on some sort of all-in-one wall mountable unit though.

I suspect I can talk it up to $3000/$3500 for each unit if need be. (If we're going to do this we ought to do it right.)

 

[DaveSimmons]

Are the displays showing the same info? If so a VGA splitter / distribution amp box plus a workstation is probably the most practical and easily maintainable design. The source PC could be a little Dell small form-facotr, or a cheap laptop.

Also, if you catch it on sale, the Dell 20" LCD can be had for about $200 less than 21" LCDs (under $800 vs. $1,000).

 

[RedFox1]

My boss liked the idea of plasma displays rigged with CAT5-VGA baluns and a VGA splitter, so I think we're going to end up going with that. We're still running cabling (this is for a new site) so it won't be much trouble to add a few shielded CAT5 runs to the plan.

Thanks for all your help.

 

[VirtualLarry]

LinkSys makes a "wireless VGA presenter" router-type device, I saw it when I went looking for firmware updates for my new WRT54G. Perhaps one of those would be a viable solution? You could hide a PC somewhere else, wirelessly, to drive those displays then.

 

[Joony]

startech solution

I used them at work with ceiling mounted projectors, they work good.