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The Doom of Wired Peripherals
techie writes "Is the doom of wired peripherals near? According to an article on CoolTechZone.com, it sure seems that way and Apple is leading the way. Quote: "Device cables are becoming a thing of the past, and that development couldn't come soon enough. We're ready to unplug, and we want to make the most of it. Apple has recognized this desire for consolidation and the benefits of a wireless lifestyle, and they've reacted effectively. When the iMac was first introduced, people went gaga over the fact that the monitor, computer, and speakers were all in one enclosure, thus eliminating the need for two bulky pieces of hardware and multiple cables. Just when you thought that was incredible enough, WiFi comes along and gives us blazingly fast Internet connections through the air, and Bluetooth rises up to allow all of our devices to sync with one another and the operating system without any wires."
Personally I'd rather have my house wired with Cat 5 than setup an access point. Besides, if I want wireless, there are 5-6 of the free linksys ssid's near by.
Until your batteries die, or your devices start to interfere with eachother, or you realise that your "Blazingly fast" wireless internet is actually pretty slow and becomes very slow as soon as anything gets between you and your access point.
Wireless "everything" is hugely overhyped. Yes, a wireless mouse is nice because it doesn't snag, but why do I need a wireless printer? Or a wireless monitor? Or anything else that's largely static for its lifetime?
USB is great because it's a) universal and b) able to power and charge quite a range of small devices.
Drop your PDA or ipod into a cradle and get a fast connection that's also charging your batteries.
When and if inductive charging (think Braun toothbrushes) becomes widespread, then maybe wireless will become sensible for most devices.
Everytime I've worked with wireless technology it's been flakey. It's gotten to the point that if friend of mine calls me up and asks for help with their "wireless network", I show up with a roll of Cat5e, RJ45 plugs and a crimper. For 99% of wireless stuff, I just refuse to spend any time trying to get this technology to work. If I want to set somthing up, I want to be able to set it up ONCE and never have to worry about it again.
I've yet to see any wireless implementation that is reliable as wired. Until that gets fixed wires are here to stay.
No, I'm not interested at all in wireless. I'm wired at home, and wired at my business. Why? I'm a big fan of speed and reliability, both of which are always sacrificed with wireless anything. Wireless may be cute if all you're doing is checking your MySpace account and shopping and doing other such trivial things. Nobody in their right mind who relies on their computers for earning a living would do wireless.
Reliability is. Most of the wireless networks and peripherals I've seen have been randomly unreliable at some point or at least more difficult to configure such that they work reliably. Much of this is due to the immaturity of the technology, but the bottom line is that wireless connections are intrinsically more flakiness-prone than wired ones.
Agree there... we have one wireless mouse at work and we end up changing its batteries a LOT...one more thing to buy batteries for isn't exactly my idea of progress... :)
:)
Well, that, and knowing how I am with the TV remote control, I'd end up tearing apart my room trying to find a mouse that most likely found its way to the fridge...
When I start thinking about the data sent to things like my monitor and speakers, I'd think you'd quickly run into bandwidth issues.
Got to agree - I have had a wired optical mouse sitting at this desk for 3 years and I have never had to even bother with it. Changing batteries every month - sod that. And before anyone mentions rechargeable batteries with a dock unit - rechargeable capacities decrease and eventually die.
The throwaway culture takes another step forward for nothing but sheer and utter laziness of humans.
I'm the minority I guess. I like cables. They work. They're secure. They're cheap.
I like cables. I don't intend on abandoning them anytime soon. Please continue providing this option.
You see, the neat thing about the world is that we don't have to completely get rid of something just because a newer way of doing it comes along.
I love having wireless networking, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't run cables through all the walls if I was building myself a house. I mostly use my cordless phone at home, but having one phone always attached to the wall means that I'll always be able to easily find it if I need it. I can't remember the battery on that phone ever dying on me.
We can have the wireless revolution without actually getting rid of all the wires. My printer can keep its wires. I don't move it very often. My iSight camera wire doesn't bother me at all. My USB hub would probably be far less useful if we got rid of all the wires, so let's not worry about that. I can't even remember the last time my keyboard's cable was a problem. My keyboard just sits there, on the keyboard drawer.
Rather than making parts of a non-mobile computer mobile, I'm much more interested in making already mobile computers better. Give us better PDA's, make a tablet computer that is useable and affordable. The cord on my mouse is not that big of a problem.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Yeah, cabling is a pain, but we should be looking at ways to reduce the power consumption of our electronics, not boost it.
Wireless peripherals would have to draw independent power and be "always on" - guaranteeing that even when everything is shut off and you're on vacation in the islands, your home computer gear is still sucking power.
Clear, Dark Skies
Bull.
"tethered by a cumbersome cord"
"the power cord, which is as unobtrusive as can be"
How can a mouse cord that's 3mm in diameter be "cumbersome", and a powercord that's twice that thickness be "as unobtrusive as can be"?
"thus eliminating the need for two bulky pieces of hardware and multiple cables"
The hardware wasn't eliminated, just consolidated. BTW, the Mac started that consolidation with the Apple Lisa (I had one) and, later, the original Mac (I had one) a long time before iFruit.
"just look at the abundance of cables in your office closet and try not to be intimidated by their menacing appearance"
Are we talking about wireless in the closet or desktop?
"appearance is clean, simple, and elegant, which is more than can be said about that grayish box that you may have"
Fanboy.
"You may wish to continue to plug in a cable and get reliable speed and data transfers that way"
Yep.
"I'll take wireless if at all possible, thank you very much."
You're welcome. Hope that works for your when your mouse batteries die, and you don't have a spare, right in the middle of working on a presentation, report, or WoW.
It's quite embarrassing, you got it all wrong.
Please consume.
12mbps-54mps
(When the nieghboors craps is not interfering with it and my roommate stops setting the cordless phone down right next to the router on the entertainment center.) The speed between the other two wired computers in the house.
1000mbps
Think that's unimportant, then you've never tried moving large amounts of files around or streaming movies while multiple wireless conections are active or being interefered with.
For easy small stuff, wireless is wonderful, for anything else it is overrated.
The other part is that my cable provider has upped our standard to at least 7megs/700k. Thats way faster then my wireless can handle.
This comment shows where exactly your understanding of bandwidth measurements falls (hint: it's low on the scale). Please explain how 7Mbps is "way faster" than even the paltry 11Mbps that 802.11b offers? (And yes, I'm aware that these are the theoretical peaks for both, and that there is overhead in the various protocols and encryption schemes).
This guy's the limit!
Batteries are only part of the problem with wirelessness. There's factors like performance and reliability that go to hell when you lose the wires.
(Non-technical) people keep suggesting that the college I work for "go wireless" for our networking... not grasping that we'd be replacing a switched 100Mbps line to every computer (with 1Gbps only a wiring-closet upgrade away) with shared wireless spectrum that tops out at 54Mbps and requires encryption, access limits, etc. People ask why I never call anyone from my mobile phone, and instead go find a landline instead... it's because I want to be able to hear and be heard. Why do you think most of the civilized world switched from wireless television to cable?
Buy a clue people: in almost any category of technology, wireless sucks compared to wired. And getting rid of a slender cable from my mouse or keyboard to my monitor is not worth it.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I find the timing of this article very coincidental, since I spent much of last Sunday under and around my desk taming the snake farm. It took nearly 4 hours to untangle, organize, bundle, strap and reconnect everything.
Just because a peripheral goes "wireless" to the CPU doesn't mean that the device lacks wires and cables. Furthermore, key devices, such as external drives (and monitors, unless you are talking iMacs) are not going to be able to go wireless without really great leaps in both data transfer and power supply technology.
So, for an interesting exercise - let's just tally up how many cables I have running:
To the Mac:
Cinema Display with ADV supplying both power and video (1)
USB hub (1)+ Laser Printer to Hub (1) + Photo inkjet Printer to Hub (1) + Scanner to Hub (1) + Mouse 1 to Hub (1) (wireless mouse) + Mouse 2 to Hub (1) (wireless mouse) + PDA Cradle to Hub (1)
External Drive 1 to USB 2.0 card (1)
External Drive 2 to USB 2.0 card (1)
External Drive 3 to USB 2.0 card (1)
UPS connection to built in USB port (1)
Ethernet cable (1)
Speaker system (1)
Firewire 400 from external DVD burner (1)
Interconnected Peripherals:
Mattias Keyboard USB to Cinema Display (1)
Griffin aluminum knob things with pretty blue light to Cinema Display (1)
Firewire 400 External Drive 1 daisy chain (1)
Firewire 400 External Drive 2 daisy chain (1)
Sound System Connections:
Speaker (subwoofer unit) system to CPU (1) + Right Channel to Subwoofer unit (1) + Left Channel to Subwoofer unit (1) + Desktop control module to Subwoofer unit (1)
Network Connections:
Co-axial cable to modem (1) + Ethernet cable to router (1) + Ethernet cable to wireless hub (1)
TOTAL DATA CONNECTIONS - 25
Power Supply Connections:
CPU (1) + USB hub (1) + Laser Printer(1) + Photo inkjet Printer to Hub (1) + Scanner (1)
Mouse 1 (1) (wireless mouse) + Mouse 2 (1) (wireless mouse) + PDA Cradle (1) + External Drive 1 (1) + External Drive 2 (1) + External Drive 3 (1) + External Drive 4 (1) + External Drive 5 (1) + UPS (1) + Speaker system (1) + External DVD burner (1) + Modem (1) + Router (1) + Wireless Hub (1)
TOTAL POWER SUPPLY CONNECTIONS - 19
That's 44 wires, excluding the power supply and telephone cord for my telephone, the power cords for the desk lamp and for the box fan I had to put under the desk to circulate air to the CPU, since all of the cords connecting the peripherals were filling the access holes in the top and side of the desk, and the various USB peripherals that I don't keep connected, such as card readers, a WACOM tablet, an iSight camera, the iPod dock.
Of all of these peripherals, the only one that can truly eliminate any cords is the keyboard. I had been using the Apple blue-tooth keyboard for a while, but didn't care for it, and substituted the Mattias with a true mechanical throw. Also, I really don't need two mice, but since I often forget to re-cradle the Logitech, I keep a second one handy, just in case. Okay - so that's three cables out of 44. Big freakin' whoop.
And since Apple's long since abandoned their proprietary data/power connection for their Cinema Displays, when I upgrade to the 30" this fall, that's another cable added to the mess.
The problem is not cabling per se, but unstructured cabling. Let me explain.
I have a fileserver, a desktop machine, a laptop router/firewall, a DSL modem/wifi router, a laptop, a printer, a UPS, switch, patch panel, 5.1 speaker system, 2 monitors, scanner, keyboard and mouse. Plus other peripherals I forgot about. All the big devices need mains power. That's roughly 9 mains connections. That means a mess of power boards plugged into the wall sockets and a mess of 9 mains cables running in all different directions. None of the devices provides a means to daisy-chain nearby devices. For example my two monitors could get by with only one mains cable, if the second monitor could plug into the first.
The scanner uses DC power so there's a power supply sitting on the floor which is plugged into the mains. The laptop also uses DC power, so it has its own separated power supply box. Although the scanner is plugged into the fileserver, it is physically located on the speaker system. So I have a USB cable running to the scanner.
My VOIP phones (forgot those!) get power from the mains but via a rectifier built into the mains plug. However the rectifier sits sideways not vertical, so the plug essentially takes up 2 sockets on the powerboard. Their power comes from the left, but their ethernet connection comes from the right, at the switch. Why can't we combine the cabling for the power and the ethernet so the phones only have one cable to plug in?
My two screens have, each, a video signal (DVI) and a power cable. So I have 4 cables to deal with. Why can't power and signal be combined into the one cable? If I want to do it myself then I have to ensure the signal is shielded from the power cable - but this engineering problem should have been solved by the monitor designer already.
Basically the cabling is a mess, for even my modest amount of infrastructure. It would help a lot if all the cabling from all the devices could go to a junction box of some kind, and be distributed out from that.
Internally PCs have the same kind of problem. Have you ever put together a PC from scratch? You probably ended up with wires everywhere. Why is there not a single connector to join the front panel (power button, reset button, USB, Firewire, speaker, mic etc) to the motherboard? Why do we have to fiddle with multiple cables, and worry about the polarity of the Power LED? Why does a case which houses multiple disk drives not include a wiring harness for those drives? Why does a case with multiple fans not include a wiring harness in the case design? How come some CD-ROMs have their power socket on the left, and others on the right? This is lowest-common-denominator engineering and I suppose it's one of the things that Apple got right, that all the parts in their PCs fit together well. Compared to the typical PC, where each part appears to have been designed without any consideration to how it will fit within the whole.
When they start encrypting the bluetooth transmissions, I'll consider using a bluetooth keyboard.
Yes, the signals are short range. But that all depends on the size of the antenna, don't it.
For anyone paranoid enough to use PGP, sending a passphrase unencrypted over the airwaves is kinda like planting a giant stake in the front yard and calling it a fence.
Relying on power though centralizes the problem. And why dispose of batteries every time, only to buy new ones, when you can just use a rechargable and have the whole system last essentially forever? Even with heavy use a bluetooth mouse can last for a month or more, then it's fifteen minutes in the charger and you're ready to go again.
Also, I don't think you've factored in the extra cost in environmental resources and pollution to produce the cord that goes on non-wireless mice, not to mention the additional complexity in packaging that probably has some six your old child winding the cord up to put the twist-tie on for packaging - wireless mice can more effectivley be packaged via automation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's not exactly wireless... Yes, the toothbrush and the power supply ARE physically isolated, but essentially it is done by making the toothbrush and its power supply each half of a standard transformer.
Let's just say that as soon as the coils of the transformer are no longer actually *inside* of each other as they are in such electric toothbrushes, efficiency goes way down. Also in the case of those electric toothbrushes, efficiency was way down to begin with. I used to have one of those, it was a perfect example of inductive heating...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
"warning - Don't place near water"
but... Iam mostly water!
is the fact that all wireless protocos are currently and will alway be easy to crack. I realize that a lot of folks do not care about security (1.they run windows. 2. They do not object to the NSA spying and then turning over the data to the DOJ).
I think the major problem would be the bloody inefficiency. In a world with shrinking oil supplies and surging energy prices do we need something that would be at beast about 10 percent efficient in transmitting electricity?
I've passed on wireless keyboards and mice mainly because I don't want to generate more battery waste which ranks up there as among the most offensive types of garbage we accumulate.
You should check out a new cutting edge technology called "rechargeable batteries".
It was a joke. Apparently the mods didn't get it. Ah well, insightful is better for karma anyway.
:x