The Wireless Setup Goes The Way Of The Paperless Office?

from the that-is...-nowhere... dept

Tue, Sep 9th 2003 2:25am — Mike Masnick

John C. Dvorak is complaining that for all the "idealism" of wireless supporters, it seems like his workspace has more wires than ever. He compares the situation to predictions of the "paperless office," though that's probably going a little too far. People continued to use paper because there's utility in paper over the digital screen for certain things. In the case of wires/wireless, we're simply at a stage where the technology is not yet advanced enough/widespread enough to make eliminating wires a real possibility just yet. He does have a point, though, about the fact that since we've separated (for the most part) the power wires from the data wires, we've simply added to the number of wires out there (though, this is nothing new). Still, over time, getting rid of wireless cables is going to make more and more sense, and there aren't many reasons why people will want to stick with wired solutions when comparable wireless ones are cheaply available.

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Brenden, 9 Sep 2003 @ 6:48am

Cheap Isn't the Only Hurdle
You mention that people will move towards wireless when they become cheaper. That may be true, but my experience has been that wired technologies are simply more reliable. For example, I have a wireless controller for my PS2. I like the idea of not having a wire dangling across the room. However, the wireless is less reliable and does have a slight delay that is noticable in some games. Recently I have found myself using the wired controller more and more.
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x, 9 Sep 2003 @ 7:12am

Re: Cheap Isn't the Only Hurdle
Not to mention all the security problems with eavesdropping and remote control
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Adam, 9 Sep 2003 @ 8:10am

He's a Whiner looking for an article to write.
We use wireless every day (seeing as how we are a company that writes software for managing wireless networks) and it is incredibly useful. If I need to go to a meeting, I just pick up my laptop and go. If I need my computer in the server closet or the development lab, I just pick it up and go.

On the other hand, I'm not using a desktop computer. At home, where my laptop is effectively a desktop, I plug it into our 100Mbit network in order to get a little more speed. I also plug it into a USB printer, a mouse, a monitor, and a power supply. At that point, wireless isn't so useful (in fact, I had to run a wire across the living room in order to get faster networking to the computer in the first place).

Dvorak needs to spend a few weeks on the road, living out of coffee shops and airports, and a little time with a well set-up modern office wireless network in order to see how useful it is.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Sep 2003 @ 4:13pm

No Subject Given
"there aren't many reasons why people will want to stick with wired solutions when comparable wireless ones are cheaply available"

Well, that's assuming wireless can catch up. Now that it's finally coming close to 100mb/s ethernet, gigabit ethernet is becoming more common. It may be that eventually wireless will be fast enough, and wired networks will only exist in situations that require huge bandwidth like video editing labs or file servers. But in the near term, I think it's more likely you'll see wireless access points added to networks, but the majority of the machines still being wired.
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