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The Doom of Wired Peripherals

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Aug 09, 2006 09:11 AM
from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
Input Devices Apple
techie writes "Is the doom of wired peripherals near? According to an article on CoolTechZone.com, it sure seems that way and Apple is leading the way. Quote: "Device cables are becoming a thing of the past, and that development couldn't come soon enough. We're ready to unplug, and we want to make the most of it. Apple has recognized this desire for consolidation and the benefits of a wireless lifestyle, and they've reacted effectively. When the iMac was first introduced, people went gaga over the fact that the monitor, computer, and speakers were all in one enclosure, thus eliminating the need for two bulky pieces of hardware and multiple cables. Just when you thought that was incredible enough, WiFi comes along and gives us blazingly fast Internet connections through the air, and Bluetooth rises up to allow all of our devices to sync with one another and the operating system without any wires."

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[+] Backslash: Wireless, Gaming Addiction, Spam, and More 45 comments
Of the thousands of comments on yesterday's Slashdot page, gathered below are some of the ones that defined the conversations on the rise of wireless peripherals, the meaning of content-free spam, whether one can be truly addicted to online gaming, and Intel's move to open source some of its graphics adapter drivers. Read on for the Backslash summary.
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  • Not quite (Score:5, Funny)

    by Overzeetop (214511) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:13AM (#15872901) Journal
    I'll jump on the bandwagon when we can get rid of the power cable. When is power over wireless coming to computer peripherals?

  • Had a wireless mouse... (Score:5, Informative)

    by geeber (520231) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:13AM (#15872904)
    and then I got rid of it.

    Fricken' batteries dieing all the time. Who needs it?

    • Re:Had a wireless mouse... (Score:5, Informative)

      by MindStalker (22827) <jlarsen@f[ ]edu ['su.' in gap]> on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:17AM (#15872935) Journal
      Get one that includes a base charger, you just stick it on the base at night.
      Also some of the new wireless none charging mice last months on a set of batteries. You can generally see the charge stats on the product description page.
      Watch out for wireless keyboards as well, some of em last months one I recently accidently bought for the office last less than a week.
      [ Parent ]

      • Re:Had a wireless mouse... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Amouth (879122) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:22AM (#15872993)
        i got the Logitech diNovo - great mouse/keyboard set - it isn't the blue tooth version and i get about 6 months on the keyboard and about 1 1/2 months on the mouse.. and i use it 8 hours a day 6 days a week. (note that i use monster 2150 mAh rechargable battries.. normaly ones suck)
        [ Parent ]

      • Re:Had a wireless mouse... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Excors (807434) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @10:09AM (#15873386)
        I've got an MX1000 (which is really quite nice, and I even use it left-handed) which recharges when you stick it in the base station. The only problem is that I now have two cables, where a wired mouse would have one – there's the USB from the base station to the computer, plus a power cable from the wall to the base station. It doesn't help the tangled-cables-under-the-desk problem at all. But it's far more practical than a wired mouse for clubbing people on the head.
        [ Parent ]

    • Re:Had a wireless mouse... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:23AM (#15872999)
      Got to agree - I have had a wired optical mouse sitting at this desk for 3 years and I have never had to even bother with it. Changing batteries every month - sod that. And before anyone mentions rechargeable batteries with a dock unit - rechargeable capacities decrease and eventually die.

      The throwaway culture takes another step forward for nothing but sheer and utter laziness of humans.
      [ Parent ]

    • Wireless ____ sucks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tverbeek (457094) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @10:21AM (#15873483) Homepage
      Batteries are only part of the problem with wirelessness. There's factors like performance and reliability that go to hell when you lose the wires.

      (Non-technical) people keep suggesting that the college I work for "go wireless" for our networking... not grasping that we'd be replacing a switched 100Mbps line to every computer (with 1Gbps only a wiring-closet upgrade away) with shared wireless spectrum that tops out at 54Mbps and requires encryption, access limits, etc. People ask why I never call anyone from my mobile phone, and instead go find a landline instead... it's because I want to be able to hear and be heard. Why do you think most of the civilized world switched from wireless television to cable?

      Buy a clue people: in almost any category of technology, wireless sucks compared to wired. And getting rid of a slender cable from my mouse or keyboard to my monitor is not worth it.
      [ Parent ]

  • Which is all great... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spad (470073) <[slashdot] [at] [spad.co.uk]> on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:16AM (#15872928) Homepage
    Until your batteries die, or your devices start to interfere with eachother, or you realise that your "Blazingly fast" wireless internet is actually pretty slow and becomes very slow as soon as anything gets between you and your access point.

    Wireless "everything" is hugely overhyped. Yes, a wireless mouse is nice because it doesn't snag, but why do I need a wireless printer? Or a wireless monitor? Or anything else that's largely static for its lifetime?

    • Re:Which is all great... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vertinox (846076) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:55AM (#15873268)
      Wireless "everything" is hugely overhyped. Yes, a wireless mouse is nice because it doesn't snag, but why do I need a wireless printer? Or a wireless monitor? Or anything else that's largely static for its lifetime?

      About 5 years ago when I was a lowly A+ certified computer shop tech, people would pay me crap loads of money to come out to their house and setup their already preconfigured computer. This usually involved me crawling under the desk and plugging color coordinated colors into their rights spots and then adjusting the cables so they look clean and then booting up the computer and then leaving.

      Had our customers took about 90 seconds to look at the instructions and plugged the cables into the right hole (including the usb and parallel printer cables) they would have saved themselves quite a bit of money.

      But... The average consumer has a real big aversion to plugging in cables even if there is no possible way to get the configuration wrong (well... I don't know how many times I've gotten calls about people getting the keyboard and mouse mixed up when they used the PS2 connectors)

      So for the average user, being able to open the box and not plug in any wires (except maybe power) is a god send.
      [ Parent ]

  • Great so everything can be unreliable (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gnasby (264673) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:18AM (#15872941) Homepage
    Everytime I've worked with wireless technology it's been flakey. It's gotten to the point that if friend of mine calls me up and asks for help with their "wireless network", I show up with a roll of Cat5e, RJ45 plugs and a crimper. For 99% of wireless stuff, I just refuse to spend any time trying to get this technology to work. If I want to set somthing up, I want to be able to set it up ONCE and never have to worry about it again.

    I've yet to see any wireless implementation that is reliable as wired. Until that gets fixed wires are here to stay.

  • "blazingly fast" (Score:5, Funny)

    by pr0nbot (313417) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:18AM (#15872946)
    WiFi comes along and gives us blazingly fast Internet connections

    My internet connection over wired ethernet - 512Kbps

    My internet connection over WiFi - 512Kbps

    Wtf are they talking about?

    BTW If you're chortling at my paltry ADSL speed -- which is the most I can get where I live -- do bear in mind that I live in remote, leafy... central London.

  • No, no wireless for me, thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NineNine (235196) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:19AM (#15872950) Homepage
    No, I'm not interested at all in wireless. I'm wired at home, and wired at my business. Why? I'm a big fan of speed and reliability, both of which are always sacrificed with wireless anything. Wireless may be cute if all you're doing is checking your MySpace account and shopping and doing other such trivial things. Nobody in their right mind who relies on their computers for earning a living would do wireless.

  • Speed isn't the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pilkul (667659) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:21AM (#15872979)
    Reliability is. Most of the wireless networks and peripherals I've seen have been randomly unreliable at some point or at least more difficult to configure such that they work reliably. Much of this is due to the immaturity of the technology, but the bottom line is that wireless connections are intrinsically more flakiness-prone than wired ones.

  • I don't hate cables. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cowscows (103644) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:25AM (#15873019) Homepage Journal
    You see, the neat thing about the world is that we don't have to completely get rid of something just because a newer way of doing it comes along.

    I love having wireless networking, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't run cables through all the walls if I was building myself a house. I mostly use my cordless phone at home, but having one phone always attached to the wall means that I'll always be able to easily find it if I need it. I can't remember the battery on that phone ever dying on me.

    We can have the wireless revolution without actually getting rid of all the wires. My printer can keep its wires. I don't move it very often. My iSight camera wire doesn't bother me at all. My USB hub would probably be far less useful if we got rid of all the wires, so let's not worry about that. I can't even remember the last time my keyboard's cable was a problem. My keyboard just sits there, on the keyboard drawer.

    Rather than making parts of a non-mobile computer mobile, I'm much more interested in making already mobile computers better. Give us better PDA's, make a tablet computer that is useable and affordable. The cord on my mouse is not that big of a problem.

  • Stupid idea. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by porkchop_d_clown (39923) <(porkchop_d_clown) (at) (mac.com)> on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:27AM (#15873034) Homepage
    Yeah, cabling is a pain, but we should be looking at ways to reduce the power consumption of our electronics, not boost it.

    Wireless peripherals would have to draw independent power and be "always on" - guaranteeing that even when everything is shut off and you're on vacation in the islands, your home computer gear is still sucking power.

  • Does this mean... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:28AM (#15873040)
    ...that Wired magazine will become obsolete?

  • is it really progress (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chris whatever (980992) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:34AM (#15873084)
    I'm wondering if it's really progress if everything we own are wireless, doesn't anybody think about the load of batteries it will take to make this equipment work?

    Even if you use rechargeable batteries, i'm pretty sure a company that has over a 1000 employees will be very pleased to buy a pack of 4 AA batteries at 20$ plus another 25$ for the charger + the time for the I.T to go around spendind their time changing batteries instead of actual work.

    I mean seriously, it may be practical but it is not cost effective or even realistic to imagine keyboard/mouse.

    How many batteries does a keyboard take and a mouse? you'll ahve to spend 40$ every 3 months for each user so they dont have wires on their desktop?

    i think not

    • Re:The paranoid still want wires. (Score:5, Funny)

      by discord5 (798235) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @09:19AM (#15872949)
      Besides, if I want wireless, there are 5-6 of the free linksys ssid's near by.

      Oh hi neighbour... I was checking my network traffic yesterday, and I just want to ask you one thing: sexyponies.com ?

      [ Parent ]
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