> I am surprised at the people who get totally ingrossed in technical
> capability but seem to completely ignore the limitations of the TREO
> itself. Its a tiny communicaitons device that is pretty smart, but its
> not a full blown workstation. What are people going to do with a Treo
> with full speed wifi anyway? If I need that speed, I'm going to use my
> laptop. The only thing I could see that would be really handy is faster
> web page browsing. I doubt I would see any difference between EVDO and
> full blown wifi speeds on the treo.
This is absolutely correct and something a lot of people fail to
recognize when wishing their handhelds had Wi-Fi. But that's not the
only limitation on the "advantages" of this technical feature.
First, as someone mistakenly suggested, Wi-Fi is not 100mbps. Wi-Fi
is 802.11b only, which is limited to 11mbps. Non-b 802.11 (e.g.,
802.11a, 802.11g, etc.) can go up to 54mbps. Some manufacturers have
pushed the spec out to 108mbps, but these are not standards-compliant
and only approach those speeds in laboratories, never in real
applications.
Second, despite Wi-Fi's theoretical max of 11mbps, realized
throughputs are often in the 1-4mbps range due to interference, packet
loss, environmental barriers, etc.
Third (and this is the thing that people seem to be entirely
overlooking when being dazzled by the prospect of high-speed Wi-Fi) is
the fact that Wi-Fi speeds are only relevant when you're talking
between two computers on the same network. Once you need to get "out"
to the Internet, you're further limited by the speed of the Internet
connection of your house/hotel/city. Most commercial Internet
connections aren't terribly fast: 2-3mbps. And given that that
bandwidth is shared by all the hotel's users, any one person's
throughput is likely significantly less than that during busy times.
Fourth, it is rare for web servers to allow any one user to download
faster than about 300kbps. Some will go up to 500kbps (and yes,
bandwidth tests are generally uncapped for that explicit purpose), but
the fact is that most times, downloads (and other interactions with
web servers) are not going to occur faster than 300kbps anyway,
despite you being on Wi-Fi or even Internet2 (which I am at work,
connected via wired Gigabit Ethernet, and I still get the same pokey
downloads from external servers that I do at home on my 3mbps Internet
connection).
So, instead of the 10+ mbps that Wi-Fi is capable of, the actual
usable speed that a Wi-Fi connection at most places of business will
give you to the Internet will still be only 1-2mbps on a good day, and
even then, the data you need/want will trickle in at 300kbps from most
public sources/servers. If you're grabbing data off a fast private
server with low utilization and a screaming connection, you might do
better, but not a whole lot.
- Craig
p.s. And yes, I said I wasn't going to debate this anymore, but the
topic has shifted away from EV-DO vs. Wi-Fi and more on the merits of
a technical feature of the phone. ;-)
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