CDR: Re: Burglar Politics, Tempesting PC's that watch TV and DVD regio

[-dsr-]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2000 at 10:12:42AM -0400, Trei, Peter wrote:
> 
> Yep. Most laptops have a video card for attaching an external monitor,
> with an unshielded port - they thus spray out monitor-driving RF signals
> while they run, regardless of whether there is a monitor out there to
> receive them. 
> 
> Of course, a *good* laptop design would power off the video card if it's
> not in use, to extend battery life if nothing else. I don't know if they do
> this.

All the laptops I've used in the last 6 years (IBM, Compaq, Dell) have
had built-in hotkeys to switch from LCD, LCD+CRT, CRT. Monitors attached
to the VGA port while the laptops were in LCD-only mode consistently
blinked their messages for "No video source".

APM (which virtually all current PCs support) allows for monitor blanking,
suspend, and powerdown. XFree86 and Windows support these functions.

-dsr-