I've also thought about using WiFi, but USB offers much more bandwidth, so using it's seems logical for video (also, I think it's the case why there are many USB 'video cards', but no 'wifi video cards').

As for VGA, I was referring to connection type, not resolution. Using VGA cable, I was transmitting 1680x1050 from my notebook to monitor - before I switched to HDMI-DVI adapter - and to be honest, quality difference is indistinguishable.

As I've said in other topic, I would be pretty happy even with *true* 1024x600 output to external monitor/TV with VGA input/etc. Of course, if higher resolutions would be possible, that's great. I also think it should - They've tried Quake3 with higher resolutions on external monitor, and everything was calculated on Raspberry Pi. Using it only as video bridge (with actual programs processed on N900) we should have plenty of free processing power.

Furthermore, just ability to use N900 with proper VGA/DVI (HDMI) output would make me buy Raspberry Pi without any doubt. Yet, it's capable of much more things, so it have a chance to be really universal in tandem with N900, especially considering awesome price.

One thing that comes to my mind - beside true video out - is using it as Ethernet adapter (instead of those uncertain adapters from ebay). Here it's rather trivial - USB networking with N900, and forwarding it to ethernet port.

Possibilities are almost limitless. Yet, most important thing that we can achieve, is - IMO - still the ability to output video to real DVI/HDMI/whatever monitors/TVs. That would really bring dreams about 100% portable computer true - we already have hostmode, USB and Bluetooth mouses/keyboards, all kinds of USB networking, virtual desktops, and Easy Debian working as pure Squeeze distribution (with LibreOffice and Chromium running on N900 blazing fast). The last thing that prevent from really enjoyable usage during travels, is ability to connect to external monitor by real means, not crappy quality TV-Out, peaking @768x576 (PAL) or even worse 720x480 (NTSC).

The hardware is all there - powered by FOSS components. All we need, is wise selection of software and/or writing some parts of code (scripts), if they're lacking.

Ideal would be a true video forwarding over USB, through Raspberry Pi, to it's HDMI out. Yet, if for some reasons, that isn't possible a real-time remote desktop client (using full USB bandwidth) and some virtual X desktop with different resolution on N900 itself (it's already possible) would do the trick. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of such fast FOSS (or not FOSS) remote desktops. And, I really *feel* (funny word for meritocratic discussion, I know) that it should be possible without such resource-hungry workarounds. Though about X forwarding over SSH, but it's reportedly not working well with N900 programs (fixme? as i've never tried it myself), and I have no idea how fast or slow they're.

It just seems to me, that if ridiculously priced, low-performance things can work via USB as external video cards, Raspberry Pi - that is much better when it comes to performance available, and have all needed components - should be also able to do that.

/Estel