You could make the same set of arguments against Wifi, too -- with just as many ellipses...
Wifi itself isn't slow, which would make the connection to the cellular network (EVDO) the bottleneck. EVDO offers air speeds of 3.1 Mbps down and 1.8 Mbps up. Bluetooth with EDR offers air speeds of 2.1 Mbps symmetric. To me, that's comparable. A perspective which hasn't been discussed is the ethicality of marketing yet another device which duplicates functionality of existing, fielded devices. Why offer a service whose charge includes the manufacturing and distribution of a device when it's likely that a good chunk of potential customers don't need the device in order to use the service? These things will be yet another hunk of plastic and metal which ends up in a landfill or on a boat back to China when, in a few years, they become outdated. Why not maximize the utility of what's already deployed? It's not like anyone else has the capacity to design and build these little Mifi widgets -- Verizon's huge and well-funded. Their decision to build yet more tech-trash instead of allowing perfectly capable phones to carry the service is enough of a short-sighted decision to make me not even consider the thing. I don't want to spend money on "cool devices" when I consider that their cost doesn't take into account their impact. Also, I don't use Verizon. - Conor On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 3:52 PM, Aaron Baer <[email protected]> wrote: > Not all devices that have 802.11 have Bluetooth to make the other side of > the tether.. iPod Touch... Laptop without bluetooth.. Plus.. BLEWTEWF is > Slow for data most of the time.. plus... you'd be killing your phones > battery to do the data.. plus plus.. this is a pretty cool device.. though > the first thing that I balked at was 250MB transfer for 40 bucks a month.. > my original snide remark was something along the lines of... "I IM more than > 250MB a month.. " but yeah.. it's still be a cool device.. from say.. > .Manzanita on the coast... > A- > > --- > Aaron Baer > [email protected] > http://www.slyness.org/ > > > On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Conor Todd <[email protected]>wrote: > >> Wtfi?? >> >> Why not simply allow someone's EVDO cellphone to act as a bluetooth >> internet gateway and skip the extraneous hardware? >> >> >> >> On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 3:05 PM, Aaron Baer <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Verizon Mifi: Personal Wi-Fi Coming this Month >>> >>> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/05/verizon-mifi-personal-wi-fi-coming-this-month/ >>> >>> >>> --- >>> Aaron Baer >>> [email protected] >>> http://www.slyness.org/ >>> >>> >>> >> >> >> > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ The Personal Telco Project - http://www.personaltelco.net/ Donate to PTP: http://www.personaltelco.net/donate Archives: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.wireless.portland.general/ Etiquette: http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/MailingListEtiquette List information: http://lists.personaltelco.net To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
