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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."
I'll jump on the bandwagon when we can get rid of the power cable. When is power over wireless coming to computer peripherals?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
and then I got rid of it.
Fricken' batteries dieing all the time. Who needs it?
Download my free songs!
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.
WiFi comes along and gives us blazingly fast Internet connections
My internet connection over wired ethernet - 512Kbps
My internet connection over WiFi - 512Kbps
Wtf are they talking about?
BTW If you're chortling at my paltry ADSL speed -- which is the most I can get where I live -- do bear in mind that I live in remote, leafy... central London.
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.
"USB is great because it's a) universal ....(think Braun toothbrushes) becomes"
Those USB toothbrushes are way kewl. Last week once, after I brushed my teeth, I got an email from a dental student in Thailand warning me about possible weakened enamel in one of my top molars.
Where were you when the voynix came?
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.
I like the fact that you can go wireless. Great, however, nothing beats a wire for security. Not too say that I don't use my wireless laptop, however sometimes having a wire upstairs makes sense. 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. But being able to print anywhere in the house... yay!!!!!!!!!
I think that is the reason for cables. I would love to be able to keep up, but when the cheap fibre to the house thing happens, my poor ole wireless wont keep up. The upgrade path is too steep. Maybe ain a few more months I will upgrade to something quicker.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
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.
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
...that Wired magazine will become obsolete?
I would say you had a bad sampling. I have a logitech wireless keyboard mouse combo, the one that came out right before they went to laser optics. It has a base station for the mouse. Yes, I have to recharge the mouse every week or so, depending on use, but there's a red LED that lights up so I know I'm getting low before it craps out completely. Nothing beats being able to prop your feet up and type from a keyboard in your lap (particularly added with the peace of mind of not having to worry if you will pull the cable out of the back of your box).
With that said, there is still room for improvement. Rumor has it that the advent of wireless USB will bring about wireless monitors. Good idea. However, while keystrokes being transmitted over wireless is a mild security risk, milder still using a RF connection like the one I have, instead of a more robust Bluetooth connection, the risk is still there. So, in that vein, imagine using a wireless monitor connection, which, depending on how it is done, is potentially putting out a ton of information through what will be (I'm almost positive) a unsecured-by-default wireless connection. This way an attacker no longer has to sift through random packets to find valuable information, but can simply watch you enter your credit card dumbers in real time. I sincerely hope they have a novel approach for this problem, because I see it as being a potentially huge security risk.
I will say I am thankful for the reduction of wired under my desk. With 3 monitors and 2 CPUs, you can barely see the floor behind my desk. With my own experience as a wireless network engineer leaving me a little leary about high fidelity digital connections, (specifically the bajillion points of failure possible in such a scenario) I am looking forward to increased innovation in this area.
Raging in an online forum won't do anything for the world around you. To see change, you must take action.
"It was when I found a wireless bluetooth toothpick in a Sharper Image catalog... That was when I decided to build the asylum."
Where were you when the voynix came?
I'm wondering if it's really progress if everything we own are wireless, doesn't anybody think about the load of batteries it will take to make this equipment work?
Even if you use rechargeable batteries, i'm pretty sure a company that has over a 1000 employees will be very pleased to buy a pack of 4 AA batteries at 20$ plus another 25$ for the charger + the time for the I.T to go around spendind their time changing batteries instead of actual work.
I mean seriously, it may be practical but it is not cost effective or even realistic to imagine keyboard/mouse.
How many batteries does a keyboard take and a mouse? you'll ahve to spend 40$ every 3 months for each user so they dont have wires on their desktop?
i think not
I just acquired Logitech S510 wireless desktop. It looks fantastic, the keyboard has a fantastic key feel, but the problem is that because it's wireless, it's a fraction of a second delayed compared to wired keyboard.
:(
When playing a videogame (NFS: Underground 2 for example) there is a delay between when the key is pressed and when the game reacts.
This is still quite unacceptable, and regrettably, i will be returning my beautiful keyboard
It's quite embarrassing, you got it all wrong.
Please consume.
If energy was free and didn't have to come from some power plant that poluted the environment, then yeah, wireless me up. Problem is that yoru wireless keyboard takes AA batteries that have to be manufactured, charged, and disposed of. What, so you don't have to look at a thin cable running to the edge of your desk? My keyboard cable doesn't kill me.
Yeah, I see WIFI in notebooks as making sense...but on a desktop? I don't move my desktop...I ran CAT5 to my office and I get faster performance and don't waste electricity on the WAP or my box.
Same goes for peripherals like wireless printers...HUH? Is this a real problem?
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
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/
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.
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
Jobs always had a thing for a one-piece system since WELCOME TO 1984!! the original Macintosh and also fanless design. Then it was try try again with the Macintosh Classic, the iMac, the Cube... no matter how bad an idea it was nor how badly it crashed in the market.
It was the Macintosh II that started the 2-piece thing and color.
Remember your history.