Because its HEAVY! Because you have to Wait while it Turns On! Because you can't do it with one hand!
We've been buying Used Vaios (12" screens 4lbs) on Ebay, for new techs, and putting in the ATT Edge Card. Been working well to enable the techs to do provisioning from the field. I've been using the PDA (mirosoft OS) phone with the pull out thump key pad. The size is plenty adequate for emergenecy access for maintenance. The only problem I ran into was that Putty SSH does not work on it with Manual Keys. Unless an extra $100 is spent on SSH software :-( What we decided is Exec types like me would have the Phone, s I would always want to maintain access, but may not always have a laptop handy. But our techs always would have their Laptops around, thus use the AirCard. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband ----- Original Message ----- From: Travis Johnson To: WISPA General List Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 3:50 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] Managing your network on the go-go-go! For what it's worth, Circuit City had a cheap (Everex) laptop for $349 a few days ago. Why mess around with a small screen and keyboard on a phone when you can just buy a laptop and have everything you need? :) Travis Microserv Clint Ricker wrote: Well, to chime in late and throw in my two cents... Don't bother. Back when I was in that sort of deal, I went down this road a few times and the reality is that it is not worth it. (I've done this on about 6 different devices and none of them are really viable for anything more than a simple service restart...which I've always been able to phone in). Few points, mostly around the screen 1. Do you really want to be editing access lists for BGP or complex config files on a 2 inch screen with a micro keyboard? The reality is (from bad experiences) is that typos are too easy to make with such keyboards and too hard to catch with the screen... 2. Outage resolution? Doesn't work...this isn't the sort of environment you want to be doing diagnostics in... Reading log files where it wraps 5 times for each line and shows 3 lines at a time is an exercise in futility. Switching between hosts is an exercise in futility in this environment. Simple fact--diagnostics is just bad at worse... Couple of points: network/system administration should not be done with both arms tied behind your back--which is exactly the type of environments these end up doing. At best, it is slow and frustrating and often involves overlooking major problems. At worse, you cause more problems than you create. There's not a single network engineer out there who would even dream of editing BGP in such an environment... Are you really telling us that things that you can do things on a two inch screen displaying complex (and lots of!) text with a micro keyboard that your staff can't do guided by phone? You may want to re-evaluate who you hire :) In any case, doesn't that scare you that you are the only one in the world who can possibly do this? Get a good network guy on retainer... you wouldn't (well, shouldn't) tolerate a single point of failure in your network; that applies to the administration as well... At best, get a micro PC (like to OGO) and a cell PCMCIA-based...this doesn't catch "I'm in the bathroom and someone just stole my car", but does cover about 90% and gives you an environment that will let you get stuff done, not screw yourself over. -Clint Ricker Kentnis Technologies On 8/7/07, Matt Liotta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: David E. Smith wrote: Ah, but I'm at the baseball game. At best, my laptop's in my car. (If I felt like putting up with traffic, that means it's in a nearby parking lot, ten or fifteen minutes away, plus however long it takes me to find a wi-fi hotspot in an unfamiliar downtown area. Most of the time, when I go to Cardinals games, I leave my car about 45 minutes away and hop on a train. That still leaves the whole "no Internet connection" problem in addition to waiting for a train, which often adds another half hour.) It's more likely that my laptop is at home, which under ideal driving conditions is an hour and a half. Assuming I'm even fit to drive; it's a baseball game, and I do like my overpriced watered-down beer. If I were gonna drive that far, I'd just drive the extra six minutes it takes to get to the office. And no, I can't phone it in (so to speak...) and have someone else do it. Discarding for the nonce the fact that I'm probably the only one in the office that can even tell you what BGP means, I'm sure you're well aware that, for this kind of troubleshooting, the ability to actually SEE what's going on is amazingly valuable, and no amount of "dude on the phone typing stuff in and reading what happens" can make up for that. (Disclaimer: I'm exaggerating a bit, for comic effect, but the point remains. First-hand troubleshooting is almost always better than second-hand troubleshooting IMO.) Is it so comical though? You are suggesting that there is a situation where there is a problem so important or complicated that only you can fix it yet you want to be able to fix it remotely via a cell phone at a baseball game. It would appear you are trying to solve the wrong problem. Matt, you have some good ideas, but they're not good for me, or for my network. I'd love to be able to build some super-duper do-it-all widget in-house, but as I'm the only developer here (and that's certainly not what it says on my business card), it's not gonna happen. The odds of finding a developer who can do all this for less than the cost of a handheld gizmo and a couple years of service for said gizmo are very nearly zip. You have convinced yourself of what you need and can't see anything that could compare. The problem with your straw man is that no such device exists. If you've used one of the small portable devices I was asking about - actual first-hand experience - and can comment on compatibility, let me know. Yes, I have a Motorola Q with EVDO that is a very effective device. I have access to our web-based OSS as well as tons of web applications built by the likes of Google et al. I can tell you quite specifically that the whole experience is awful. Even with EVDO it takes 3 to 4 times longer to get movie times, directions, etc than just making a phone call. The device works great for phone calls, messaging, and simple web-based tasks. I'd rather shoot myself than try and use SSH from it. -Matt -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.11.8/940 - Release Date: 8/6/2007 4:53 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/