Andrew Beals [bandy_at_cinnamon.com] wrote the following 2002-01-14 23.45:
> Wireless access has been done -- only it's either very expensive [& your =
ISP
> folds: Ricochet/Metricom!] or it is painfully slow [surf the web at over
> FOURTEEN THOUSAND BAUD!] and extremely expensive [cellular data per-minut=
e
> "service"] and doesn't work everywhere or it only works when you're on-si=
te
> [802.11b] and near wall power and a network jack anyway.
only part of this is true:
1. what is expensive? is there an alternative to metricom really? not with
the same feature set - hence it is probably a reasonable price if you think
about the value added. if there are few alternatives to a certain service,
the price is not arguable ;-D also, remember someone will always have to pa=
y
the "early adopter tax".
2. what is slow? at HSCSD, you get 42.3k/s in four time laps, which is more
than you can get out from most GPRS netw=F6rkz. GSM has superior coverage and
all that too, which means its optimal in most cases. a portable device is
not supposed to be "always on" - it will drain the batts, so GSM is fine
with me for so long. with GSM youre always reachable, if the sending part
takes one more minute or so, its not a big issue, really. (BTW, when it
comes to fax class III its always 9600bps, even with new equipment.)
3. what is short range? if you work in and travel between places with vivid
hotspot networks set up to handover and roaming, this is not an issue. wors=
e
though, is that the WIFI cards tend to drain even the most powerful cells.
but as we all know by now, newtons never die, they just get new batteries!
just my two ... well, actually three ...
/over
doppler
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