RE: A quick Ethernet/Wireless straw poll please

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ian.

Couple of thoughts.

Personally, I'd always try to use a wired rather than a wireless I/F
whenev=
er & wherever possible, and would only want to use wireless if there
*reall=
y* wasn't any other way...

>From a flexibility & manufacturing POV, wouldn't it be better for
you to ju=
st leave your device with a single wired interface, since anyone can then
c=
onnect that to an external wireless adapter if they wanted to.=20

Plus, given your projected price point, it seem as though it would
actually=
be cheaper for the end user to add their own off-board wireless adapter; (=
after all, access points can be bought for as little as =A320-odd)...

As an alternative, rather than providing a built-in wireless interface,
cou=
ldn't you perhaps consider fitting either a PCMCIA or USB interfaces to
the=
board, and would this be significantly cheaper than fitting wireless? - Ag=
ain this would allow the end user to fit their own wireless interface, and
=
has the added benefit of giving them the choice of what wireless interface
=
they want to use...

This last point is my last comment on the flexibility aspect... - we all
kn=
ow that current wireless hardware isn't necessarily 100% compatible across
=
all vendors.. - Different WiFi chipsets have interoperability issues,
certa=
in manufacturers introduce proprietary features yadya-yada... If you
design=
in a wireless interface into the product, you are imposing that choice on =
the end user, and potentially opening yourself up for increased support
bur=
den when users can't get your particular flavour of wireless to work on
the=
ir flavour of wireless network...

Paul G.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ian.bird@xxxxxxx
> [mailto:ian.bird@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: 12 November 2004 10:23
> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> Subject: [ukha_d] A quick Ethernet/Wireless straw poll please
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> Hi everyone
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> I am building an HA touch screen controller for wall mounting which
will
> have an Ethernet interface for communication to the rest of the world.
> This will run a menu system which will send text based messages over
> Ethernet e.g. xAP, xPL, home-brew etc. + a lot more functionality.
> Currently this has a simple 10Mbit CAT5 interface.
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> Now, my questions are........
> 1) If you were going to use one of these systems how highly would you
rat=
e
> a wireless 802.11b interface?
> 2) Since the hardware to make this a reality costs money what would
you
> think is a reasonable extra amount to pay for wireless? A finger in
the
> wind guess would be about 80 pounds extra (on top of the original
units
> estimated price) for the wireless versions. If I do fit wireless I
would
> not produce a non wireless version as supporting two interfaces would
be
> too expensive and complicated.
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> If I did go wireless my units would have a 10/100 wired CAT5 interface
OR
> wireless 802.11b (but not both at the same time). This would be
software
> configurable somehow.
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> Opinions or thoughts folks?
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> Ian
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> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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> Yahoo! Groups Links
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