>Everything is Wireless

The very first "online" system I saw was called The Source, and I was amazed at seeing (text only of course) a news item that was happening in the Middle East at the time I was reading it in Perth. Then along came Xenix with remote terminals that could talk down phone lines (albeit at 300 baud) to the server. And even the humble Tandy CoCo with the OS/9 operating system (that wasn't so humble) could handle remote terminals.

Next off the block, and by comparison a huge leap, was ViaTel.Yes it was a money-sucking monster, but it worked and opened up a whole new world. It was quickly followed by CompuServe (I was 8220,1655) and Microsoft's MSN, but then of course the Internet itself took over. All this in less than 15 years.

I attribute my wonder to a healthy dose of TV shows such as Supercar, Fireball XL5, Doctor Who, Thunderbirds and other similar programs, as a youngster. My childhood fantasies of technological wonders were coming true in my own lifetime.

However, if I thought it would end there, I was sadly mistaken. Every day new gadgets cross my desk, and my current fantasy world revolves around the concept of wireless connectivity. This is the next Big Thing in my mind, and will go well beyond what we have now. But in talking to people, I'm somewhat astounded at the lack of knowledge there is and what can be achieved using this technology. It's déjà vu in a way, as I wrote a column much like this in 1987 claiming "Star Trek is not the future, it's here now people".

So apart from the humble wireless mouse, just what can we achieve right now?

The most obvious, and the starting point for a lot of things of course, is your network. I think the days of a household with just one computer are gone. Let's take the hypothetical situation of a "standard" family of father, mother and two children - boy and girl. Presumably, the parents would have a computer that would be in a shared place such as the family room and this is used for anything from taxation record keeping to running an entire business, email, surfing the web and entertainment. The children probably have a laptop each, doubling as a school and personal computer.

Rather than having multiple Internet accounts, or forcing everyone to use the PC in the family room, it makes more sense to install an ADSL or Cable Internet line to the family room computer, and then have a wireless local area network in the house for the laptops to connect to, no matter where they are in the house or garden. The cost of this is certainly going to be cheaper than having multiple modems and phone points, or having cabling running through the house to bedrooms or wherever the laptops are used. And in these days of Windows Vista, setting up a single wireless LAN is mostly a doddle. Of course, the speed of a wireless LAN combined with ADSL2+ makes dialup look like it isn't even turned on.

There's even a company with which you can go into partnership, allowing outsiders to use your wireless network and get paid for the privilege. They then share the profits with you. Security of course is also looked after.

Accepting that the network becomes the centrepiece, the next things are peripherals and storage. While each PC/laptop has its own hard disk, it makes a lot of sense to have a large, central storage repository leaving localised hard drives for data that needs to be portable, such as emails, school work and so on. These large drives are now so cheap as to be almost throwaway items.

There are two possibilities here. The first is to have a big hard disk attached the home-based PC, and have sharing facilities on this to allow the two laptops to read and write to folders on it. I bought a 500GB drive a few weeks back for less than $120. It's USB based and would probably suit most families in this scenario. The second option is to get a NAS drive that actually becomes part of the network itself - instead of having to share drives, instead you save to a device on the network, in this case, the NAS drive. They're more expensive than a USB drive but in many circumstances, are a better proposition.

The same applies to printers. Why have three printers when one can be attached to the family PC (let's call this the Home Server) and each person can use it via the network?

Okay, we now have a basic system that would act quite nicely for the average home, eliminate "computer time" squabble and save on buying multiple resources such as printers. Assuming the laptops have wireless built in, the maximum cost for this connectivity is around $300.

All work and no play

Let's switch our thinking from the computer being a "workplace device" to being an entertainment hub.

To turn your computer and screen into a digital TV is easy- all you needs is a tuner card (for a PC) or a USB based one (for laptops), hook it up to a standard TV antenna (amplified and/or with splitter if necessary) and tune it in. You can then use the PC to watch and record programs and play them back - just like a VCR or DVD recorder. Another way is to buy a gizmo called a DVICO TViX that has a hard drive in it as well as a TV tuner - like an external tuner card but smarter. It allows full control as with the standard tuner, but also can connect via wireless to your network so anyone in the house can access it from their PC. A DVICO TViX can also store and play back music, photos and videos. Neat hey?

It can also be integrated with an Australian electronic program guide (EPG) called IceTV for programming recordings accurately. That is, IceTV knows when the program has started by a data switch and not the expected time (which as we know is never reliable) and will turn off the recording the same way.

Formats

While we're speaking of TV and video, lots of clips and movies use a very popular format called DivX, which even supports high definition. So let's assume you have a new generation hi-def camcorder - you can use any number of packages to turn your footage into the compressed but very watchable DivX format and play them back on your computer screen. It's a shame about the dirty big, shiny plasma in the lounge room though isn't it?

No fear, another wireless based device called a DLink DivX Connected can be attached to your TV in the same was as VCR or DVD player/recorder. Via wireless the movie files are streamed from your PC to the plasma for glorious hi-def viewing! In my case, my PC is downstairs in the office and the plasma/LCD is upstairs, and the wireless streams with no problem at all.

Now let's get really excited. Many people have an XBOX 360 for playing games. What a lot don't know is that the XBOX and Windows Vista are designed and engineered to work with each other, with the XBOX becoming an "extender".

This means that you connect the XBOX via wireless to your PC, and then by running the Windows Media Center software on top of Vista, you can build libraries and playlists of all your movies, music and photos on the PC and have them played back wirelessly on the TV attached to the XBOX. Again, here I have an upstairs/downstairs scenario with no problem. Note at this stage, this doesn't work with Sony PlayStation or Nintendo Wii, but you can now buy a third party extender from Linksys, and I'm sure more will come onto the market.

One drawback with this is the number of remotes that suddenly start breeding. I have at least eight remotes covering all this stuff plus my Foxtel IQ2 box. The solution is to get a universal remote, and I use a Logitech Harmony 785 (also reviewed in this issue of PC Update).

You might also think about getting a BigPond/Optus/Three NextG wireless connection for your laptop. I find my BigPond one incredibly useful as I travel a lot, and it means I don't have to rely on expensive third party "hot spots" or carry a dialup modem with me. I also find it useful if my normal 'net connection gets disrupted through power failure or a technical fault at the exchange and I absolutely MUST have communication abilities - usually for work on deadlines.

If I'm travelling, I find an incredibly useful piece of software is "Logmein". This a server based application sitting on my main PC and running all the time. On the
laptop, I have the client software which communicates via the Internet and allows me to "run" my home office PC from my laptop in real time. This is fantastic for looking up a document I may have forgotten for example. I've even sent a fax of a document to myself at the hotel when I needed a hard copy of something, or simply emailed it if a soft copy will do.

Finally, all of my Outlook data (except emails) is duplicated on my Motorola 3G phone and this is updated automatically, wirelessly and I'm using Dragon Naturally Speaking via a wireless Plantronics headset for document creation (such as this one).

I can't wait to see what comes next, but it's nice to be able to say what I always dreamed of... Look Ma', no wires!

Reprinted from the October 2008 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

[ About Melbourne PC User Group ]