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Handhelds Hardware

Get Your Palm On The Network 61

Posted by timothy from the feel-the-pulse-of-the-planet-prescribe-aspirin dept.
Anonymous Coward writes: "There's a cool article over on O'Reilly network showing how to set up a network connection between a Linux box and Palm Pilot, and then run a Web server on the Palm to access the documents. There's also a VNC client which I'm downloading now. Wild!"
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Get Your Palm On The Network More

Get Your Palm On The Network

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  • Whoah this is so cool (Score:3)

    by oog_rocks ( 165975 ) on Friday May 05, 2000 @08:25PM (#1088532) Homepage
    what would be even cooler though is if each palm pilot could act as a node in a self-growing network. with sufficient bandwith and rollout as well as a few repeaters, you could have a totally wireless network that is actually built simply by people having palm pilots near you. that would kick the crap out of just using infared docking.

  • Another Palm/Linux Gizmotron (Score:5)

    by rerunn ( 181278 ) on Friday May 05, 2000 @08:29PM (#1088533)
    Here's another neat palm ditty. IBM had originally made an app called SNAPP for the palm which allowed admins to administer their RS6000 boxes with their palm. They have since released a linux version. Check it here: http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/snapp

  • Just as well... (Score:3)

    by Goldberg's Pants ( 139800 ) on Friday May 05, 2000 @08:36PM (#1088534) Journal
    Just as well there's no working example of the web server online. Imagine a /.'ed Palm Pilot:)

  • Wow, I can set up a network connection between my Palm and my Linux box? Sweet! Now I won't need to lug a laptop around ever where I go; I can just access it all from my Palm. Nothing beats having all your entire address book stored inside your hand?

    It's great to see innovations like these making good on the promise of nanotechnology -- but I still have to wonder, can I network my Sole, Lower Back, or Nose in addition to my Palm?

    Yu Suzuki

  • What a thrill it must be to type a dozen commands at the console and cross your fingers to sync your Palm instead of just pressing the cradle's Sync button like Windows and Mac users do. Pure comedy.

    Why would you need to type more then one command?
  • I wonder why Palm/Handspring used a serial connection (or USB) to do the syncing and transfer. I think an ethernet connection would be the way to go... completely platform independent... that would rock.

    I wish we would see more companies use ethenet. I mean, would it be nice to see a Rio with an ethernet port to pump in MP3's? From what I have done with embeded ethernet, it isn't hard at all...

    Just a thought...

    Ryan

    -Vegtables can't run.
  • Sounds like something out of the X-Files... kinda like that Palm Pilot-like gizmo that Krychek(sp) used to make Skinner sicker and/or better.

    Even so... Big Blue gets big kudos for this one. (Pizazz? oh brother!)

    Maybe I'll bust open the wallet and purchase a Palm Pilot one of these days and check this thing out!

  • Because I'm not really into wasting time (Slashdot posting excluded ;) ). Actually, although the Palm's a great PIM, if you're interested in going outside the box, like with the stuff mentioned in this article, you're much better served going with a real PDA computer, like a PocketPC or EPOC device, or at the very least one of the PalmOS-based Handsprings.

    And as for the the dozen commands, it's called exaggeration, nothing to get worked up about. The fact is that it's a pain in the ass to get the Palm going under Linux than compared to the same under Windows. And yes, I've done both. Anyone saying otherwise must not've read the article, which is pretty accurate.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • maybe you would be interested... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    you can get full text internet access, read and post to newsgroups, run Unix commands, compile C programs, telnet, use Linux icq, etc. for free with any wireless email device. http://www.trancell.com free wireless internet without the WAP.
  • aiight... fuck the yopy, i'm buyin this bitch tomorrow... i've just heard too many cool things about the palm... gotta get me one... hmmm... now to decide WHICH i want (can afford)...
  • bluetooth [bluetooth.com]

    unfortunately only creates networks to 30 ft distance, although overlapping "scatternets" can be created.

  • what protocol does VNC use? TCP/IP? if so, can VNC server be set up to be compatible with JINI network so the VNC server & the VNC client(palm) can be in dJINI, and you could create an ad hoc network. Also what do you think about the possibility of thin client network, or information appliance devices that could work like a remote control for your PC. what is the bandwidth requirement to make this feasible?
  • At first thought, this sounds more like something you can do with a palm that is kinda cool. Maybe just another buzzword which will sell more products. Thinking twice, this sounds more like something that will have much more powerful use in the near future than it does at this time. Everyone I know with a palm absolutely hates having to use lame duck software with limited functionality to download something as simple as the address book from the little guy. More flexible options are always a "good thing" (TM).

    Who knows, soon we might have palm sized devices that are more powerful than a simple address book holder/pager. The need to run apache on such a device, probally none, the need to be able to access it as if it were just another computer, perfect. I could lay on the beach "working" all day and when I go home in the evening and set the little guy into his little sheath, my data could be automagicly RCS checkin'd on my computer. I just need to learn how to actually write anything with that dumb plastic pen...

  • I wonder why Palm/Handspring used a serial connection (or USB) to do the syncing and transfer.

    Probably because a vast majority of home users do not have ethernet ports. Most if not all personal computers running Win/Mac have a serial and/or USB port right out of the box. I'm sure connectivity is a large part of the Palm marketing strategy.

    If the Palm had ethernet in addition to the existing serial/USB, that would be best of all, but to use ethernet instead of the serial/USB would be counterproductive, IMHO.

  • does yopi have a pcmcia port? then you it is possible to hook up wave lan and hack the VNC to run natively on the linux kernel that yopi uses rather than palm OS. also whatever happened to transmeta's curusoe chip?
    i haven't heard from them for a while.

    /js
  • cool... very cool... tho, that'd require getting a cell... the service is less than it sounds, but STILL... (actually, if i ever get a cell and a palm, i'll just set this up on my own server... very easy)
  • Actually, some of the newer distros have pretty good Palm support, (Caldera in particular) even have a graphical interface under KDE which is almost as gooey as Windows. (hully gee.)

    Not all Linux distros are stuck in the command line... which is not to say they are "modern", exactly. =P

  • Here's what I'm waiting for:

    1) Bluetooth/wireless Ethernet, Ricochet/cell networking integrated, with automatic fallover
    2) Voice recognition (ditch the annoying handwriting style)
    3) More convenient form factors (eyeglass clipon, for example)
    4) Automatic delegation of complex or computationally demanding tasks to servers over the aforementioned network

    I'll get one when it integrates less obtrusively into life. Otherwise, there's not much benefit over my current system (computer and photographic memory)... or does it? Anyone have a good reason to get a Palm that counters anything here?

  • Linux and Windows CE (Score:4)

    by a.out ( 31606 ) on Friday May 05, 2000 @09:56PM (#1088550)
    (begin shameless plug)
    There is also a tool to create a connection between a Linux box and a Windows CE device. It's called SyncLICE.
    It just sets up a ppp connection between your box and the CE device, creates ipchain rules etc... Check it out Here [dhs.org]!
    (/shameless plug)
  • I sent email postcards (including pictures drawn on the Palm) last time I went on vacation. A record of them can be found at http://rumsey.org/trips.html [dhs.org]. They were done using nothing but a Palm running MultiMail, with a Palm modem, connected through a shell account using SLiRP.
  • D'oh. http://rumsey.dhs.org/trips.html
  • It's really nice to have access to my network almost anywhere there's CDPD coverage.
    Here's an old article about a hole [slashdot.org] I found at NSI using a wireless palm III.

    It's great to get work done while just sitting at the airport. A palm link [palminfocenter.com]

  • I just have to say this....
    Lets make a beowulf cluster with these!!
  • Orgs like the Navy pay big money contracts to network Palms together. Higher personal income usually means, on average, that there is a higher chance of female interaction. I'd much rather network my Palm and make big bucks than use my palm for a self-intercourse transaction. The more you know the former, the less you need the latter.
  • Mindless dribble. "Fighting those new Pocket PCs", uh Palm is the one with the monopoly.

    And at least with Pocket PCs you have a lot of choice in what you can buy. Compaq has a very small Pocket PC that's the same size as the Palm V. Most other Pocket PCs are only slightly larger, and are comparable to the other Plam models size wize.

    Features wise and readability, there's no comparison.
  • The ppp link is easy, I even scanned my palm from my fbsd box once. Of corse, Nmap had no clue what os the palm was.
  • Hmmm... from the sound of that article title I thought it was going to be about mixing business with pleasure.


    But what to do I know? I'm going back to watching Bowling for Aardvarks.

  • Excellent article! Rarely have I seen an article this well-researched and useful.

    Anyway, I just wanted to mention one use for a networked Palm device: an offline newsreader. After setting-up the network connection, one could use Yanoff [www.free.de] or another newsreader to fetch articles while connected to the PC, and read/reply to them when in meetings ... err I mean when traveling. ;-)

    -Karl

  • First, Nothing is new in this world. Second, I was speaking statistically [gallup.com], not personally. Speaking personally, it's not about getting layed, it's about relationships. Try having a long lasting relationship without making any money. Finally, you should be careful when you talk about "our" gene pool [exploratorium.edu]. To whom is the "our" referring?

    Didn't anyone ever tell you that Hate [adl.org] is a strong word... Do you spend a lot of valuable time rushing to judgement and criticizing people? [keirsey.com]

  • Also, there's been a Newton web server for this kind of data already available, and it's been out for over two years.

    Better than that, it's been GPLd. :)

    http://come.to/lightyear_media [come.to]

  • Actually there have been examples. Check out this Palmstation article [palmstation.com].

    For those who just want the link: This Old Palm [kipnruth.com].

  • Ok, so we have a VNC browser but how about a decent web browser? The only ones I know of, Proxy Web and AvantGo both use a proxy to pre-format the content. What I'd like to see is a browser that operates entirely on it's own. It could be a simple text-only bare-bones browser as long as it's reliable and works well without having to rely on the proxy of another company.

    Does anyone know of any browser like that for Palm? (I use a Palm IIIx and the IR link to a Nokia 8210 phone that I use as the modem)

    I know of a few WAP browsers but as long as there are more WAP browsers than WAP sites, I think I'll wait. In any case, WAP has got to be the worst example of reinventing the wheel ever. Why didn't they just agree on a subset of HTML anyway - you know.. HTML, BODY, HEAD, TITLE, P, BR, B, I, U, A, IMG, FORM, INPUT and SELECT for instance. Or if you have to include tables, then forbid the use of COLSPAN and ROWSPAN and nested tables, which would make table rendering SO much simpler. But no.. they had to invent a new language. *sigh*
  • It's a pain in the ass to do most things in linux. I don't see why you're complaining.

    also, you've forgotten an important rule: Never ask a geek 'why' - just nod your head and back away slowly. don't make any sudden moves, make sure they can see the open palms of your hands.

  • StarOffice 5.1 and 5.1a supports _importing_ from a Pilot into the address book, but does not support Categories. This means restoring _from_ StarOffice _to_ a Pilot will cause you to have duplicate entries. This is a REAL pain to fix.

    The good news is that StarOffice 5.2 beta -- while it has other problems -- does not have this one.

  • Here is how I connected my Handspring Visor PDA to
    my Qualcomm cell phone and got on the net wirelessly...

    http://rick.8k.com/handspring/

    -Rick
  • Most MS Windows users don't know anything about this patch, so it's very new news to most of them.
    I bet I could walk into the majority of corporations and find that most, if not all, of their Windows machines are not patched.

    Patch Availability:

    Windows 95 Patch [microsoft.com]

    Windows 98 Patch [microsoft.com]

    The following is from a March 4, 2000 news release from Securiteam.com [securiteam.com]

    Microsoft has released a patch that eliminates a security vulnerability in Microsoft Windows 95/98/98 Second Edition.
    The vulnerability could cause a user's system to crash, if they attempted to access a file or folder whose path contained certain reserved words.

    Vulnerable systems:
    - Microsoft Windows 95
    - Microsoft Windows 98
    - Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition

    DOS device names are reserved words, and cannot be used as folder or file names.
    When parsing a reference to a file or folder, Windows correctly checks for the case in which a single DOS device name is used in the path, and treats it as invalid.
    However, it does not check for the case in which the path includes multiple DOS device names.
    When Windows attempts to interpret the device name as a file resource, it performs an illegal resource access that usually results in a crash.

    Because it is not possible to create files or folders that contain DOS device names, it would be unusual for a user to try to access one under normal circumstances.
    The chief threat posed by this vulnerability is that a malicious user could attempt to entice a user to attempt such an access.
    For instance, if a web site operator hosted a hyperlink that referenced such a path, clicking the link would result in the user's machine crashing. Likewise, a web page or HTML mail that specified a local file as the source of rendering information could cause the user's machine to crash when it was displayed. If this happened, the machine could be put back into normal service by restarting it.

    What causes the vulnerability? The vulnerability results because of a flaw in the way Windows 95 and 98 (including Windows 98 Second Edition) parse file path names. Device names such as COM1, CON or LPT1 are reserved words, and they can't be used as folder or file names. When parsing a reference to a path, Windows checks for the presence of a single DOS device name in the path. If one is found, the path is correctly treated as invalid and an error is returned. However, neither Windows 95 nor 98 check for multiple DOS device names. This is the source of the vulnerability. If a read or write operation is attempted to a path whose name contains multiple DOS device names, it will cause Windows to attempt to access invalid resources. In some cases, the effect of this invalid access would be to cause the application that supplied the path to hang, but the more likely effect is that the machine would present a blue debug screen and crash. What names could cause this problem? It's not possible to compile an exhaustive list of all DOS device names, because third-party application developers can create their own device drivers and add their names to the reserved list. However, Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q256015 provides a list of all standard DOS device names. What would need to happen for me to be affected by this vulnerability? You would need to try to reference a path that contains more than one DOS device name. The operations by which this could happen are familiar file and folder access operations - reading a file, listing a folder's contents, etc. Under normal conditions, this problem is unlikely to occur. Users cannot create files and folders whose names are reserved words like DOS device names. Because of this, it would be very unusual for a user to try to access such a file or folder. For example, it would be very unlikely that a user would try to list the contents of C:\COM1\COM1, since it is impossible for him to have created such a folder. However, a malicious user might use this vulnerability to try to cause other users' systems to crash. How could a malicious user do this? She would need to entice the user into doing something that resulted in an attempt to access a file whose path contained reserved words. For example, if she hosted a web site, she could include a link on a web page that displayed a file located in C:\COM1\COM1. Normally, it's safe to allow a web site to do this - the site can't read or change the file, only display it in the owner's browser. However, when Windows tried to locate the file, it would cause the system to crash. It wouldn't matter that the file doesn't even exist on the user's machine, because the very act of trying to find it is what would cause the crash. There also are scenarios in which it would not be necessary for the user to click on a link to be affected by the vulnerability. For example, web pages can specify that an image file on the user's computer should be used as the page background. If this were done, simply displaying the page would cause the user's computer to crash. HTML mails could be used in a similar manner. Are customers who have Preview Mode enabled on their mail viewers at any greater risk from this vulnerability? Yes. HTML mail renders in Preview Mode, so if a malicious user sent an HTML mail to someone who had Preview Mode enabled, the vulnerability be exploited as soon as the mail was previewed. I have preview mode enabled in Outlook. If I received such a mail, what should I do? Start Outlook from a command prompt, and use the /safe and /nopreview options to turn off preview mode. Microsoft Knowledge Base articles Q197180 and Q182112 provide information on how to do this. Once you're able to get into Outlook, you can simply delete the offending mail. Obviously, you should do this without opening the mail. What would I need to do to put my machine back in service after a crash? You would just need to restart the machine. There's no lasting harm from the crash, although any work that was in progress would be lost during the crash. Does this vulnerability affect Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000? No. Who should install the patch? Customers using Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows 98 Second Edition should install the patch. What does the patch do? The patch causes paths containing more than one DOS device name to be treated as invalid paths. This is correct behavior.

  • This maybe slightly offtopic, but this is the best crowd to answer the question.

    I want to setup a wireless lan at work with my pc and a handheld. Specifically, I want to use either the Vadem Clio [clio.com], which is just sooo cool or the Psion 5mx [psion.com], both of these have pcmcia slots which would accept the lucent wavelan [wavelan.com] 11Mbps card. Is there any way to setup tcpip between these and my suse box? The options are just endless...Most of my time is spent at work or home and I'd rather have a fast connection than try to use my cell phone...

    Sitting in a meeting...playing quake!

    This way you don't have to deal with the hassle of WAP or web clipping or whatever it is they call it these days...

  • Been There - Done That (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Been There Even very old Newton can get onto a network and use Appletalk over LocalTalk, you just hooked it to an network connection and printed out to an postscript printer. More modern Newton Messagepad could also use TCPIP over Ethernet, an of course AppleTalk over Ethernet In fact, my fave way since years ago to back up my Newton is to connect it to my network and backup to another computer on the network running a newton backup program. That program is running on my server, so my file is saved on the server as they should be. Oh, and a www server, sure, was some years ago since we got that for Newton too. The only thing Newton always did lack, except for full support from Apple, is an VNC or Timbuktu thingy....
  • There are a ton of great network apps for the palm pilot, including web browsers, telnet clients, IRC & ICQ clients... it's too bad that Serial is becoming a "legacy" port, because having the serial port on the Palm is cheap and easy to program. I can walk up to my headless server and plug the palm into the serial port, log in, and see what's going on. You could rig it to a cell phone and check mail. I was even looking at writing an app to use it to talk (via the serial port) to a servo motor driver... there's not much these things can't do! :)

    ---

  • Users cannot create files and folders whose names are reserved words like DOS device names.

    But...

    third-party application developers can create their own device drivers and add their names to the reserved list.

    What about: create a folder, then reboot with a device driver of the same name loaded?

  • My microwave has an analog controll. I've determined that the only way to get anything to cook right is to twist the knob all the way up 1hour and just count off the seconds myself.
  • Since nobody's mentioned it yet, you might want to check out OmniSky [omnisky.com]. They just finished their beta program, they're taking orders now, and are shipping in a few weeks. Inexpensive clip-on CDPD wireless 19.2kbps modem for the Palm V, full TCP/IP, unlimited service.

    I just ordered mine.

    Of course, the Palm V only has 2MB of RAM, unlike the Palm Vx, which can make web browsing, news reading, running a web server, and e-mailing feel a bit cramped. So I'm getting mine upgraded to 8MB [dataslice.com] next week. There are currently 3 companies who do this, and this one has gotten the best reviews and is also the cheapest. Many of the OmniSky beta testers did this.
  • Its a form factor issue as well. Sure, you could fit an ethernet cable in a docking station. But fitting an RJ-45 plug in the Palm Pilot itself is a stretch. Look at all the flimsy PCMCIA ethernet card solutions. I bet USB is cheaper to impelement as well. Personally, I use the Palm IR interface a lot. And I wish Linux would get better USB support.
  • I've been trying to figure out if it's possible to connect a Visor modem to a cell phone to dial in to an account. The upside, of course, would be wireless interenet access to porn wherever you go! From what I've seen, it looks like some GSM phones support this feature (ericsson ones seem better), but I'm still not sure if it is doable in the US. Can anyone say definatively if this is possible, and how?

  • Re:Good work Palm !! (Score:3)

    by generic-man ( 33649 ) on Saturday May 06, 2000 @06:04AM (#1088576) Homepage Journal
    "Fighting those new Pocket PCs", uh Palm is the one with the monopoly.

    Palm doesn't have a monopoly in the pocket-sized PDA market. With a market share of 70-80%, there's still plenty of room for competition. People have been buying Palms not because they're automagically bundled with their operating systems or computers, but because they actually like the product. Remember that Palm/USRobotics/3Com/Palm never even advertised in print or on television until last year, and they had sold several million units when the campaigns started running.

    Imagine that. A good product is selling on its merits, and of course on the fact that Everyone Uses It, So It Must Be Good (tm). 'course, I don't want to compare the Palm with AOL any time soon, but hey, there are at least a couple of paralells.
  • I followed the links from the O'Rielly article, and they discuss how to route IP from the Palm through the cradle through Win95. Anyone know how to do it under NT? Knowing NT, it cant be as easy as adding the serial link modem and RAS services.
    I remember seeing a link to something about this many many moons ago but can't find it now.
  • It exists...

    Palm Ethernet Cradle [palm.com]

  • Just in cas you're interested, my Palm III is vulnerable to several well known DoS attacks such as IP frag attacks like teardrop and netsea.

    On a related note - I once demoes mp3 streaming from my palm III - by streaming low bitrate mp3 files to players (actually 16kbit, 11025kHz, mono mpeg 2.5 audio). one of these days I want to port the core of iceast to it.... but I think Ill have to wait until I get a faster connection to the palm - the cradle only supports a bandwidth of about 56kbit... not enough for many listeners.

  • Well, I like AvantGo a lot. I'm not as happy with their "open" software. I've spent a lot of time reading the code and figuring out what the heck it does, and didn't get an inch closer to setting up my own AvantGo portal (which I only need because the stuff I want to sync on my Palm is not out there on the Internet; setting up a custom channel to use their server is trivial).

    Sigh.

    Incidentally, the VNC thingy is cool, but it doesn't run on my Palm V. I tried recompiling the thing, which worked, but now user input is broken. This is a problem with a lot of cool toys for the Palm: when source is available, it rarely compiles with a recent GCC and Palm SDK. More of this stuff should be on sourceforge, so it can be brought forward as the Palm platform develops.

  • Try using the IR interface. I've been able to get 115200 Kbps using the SIR interface on my Toshiba Libretto and Linux IRDA. If you have a FIR chip on your desk/laptop you can get up to 4Mbps. That's MORE than enough to kick your cradle's ass speed-wise. Check out the Linux IRDA Project [cs.uit.no] for details!
  • If your cell phone service provider has PCS data service, you can just throw your visor modem away. You don't need it because the cell service has a modem pool.

    The cell phone becomes a "really long cable" to the modem pool, which dials out to your ISP just like any modem. In general, there is no extra cost for this from your cell service, and no need to even sign up for it.

    All you will need is the cable to connect the Visor to the cell phone. See http://rick.8k.com/handspring/ [8k.com] for instructions on one way to make a cable to connect to a Qualcomm phone. A buddy is doing the same for a Nokia phone.

    The reason you need a special cable is that the Visor cradle connector serial port is different from the Palm one. The pinout is different (no modem control signals), and the levels on the Visor are TTL but are RS-232 on the Palm. -Rick

  • I don't think "Direct Serial" was an option until PalmOS 3.3. (Visor runs modified 3.1 and is not flashable). However, there are a couple of ways to do this.

    1. In Preferences -> Network, define a new connection type. Set the phone # to "00". This is an undocumented switch to create a direct connection without dialing.

    2. Make the connection at USB speeds using "LinkUSB". Check out usbvisor.sourceforge.net for more info.
  • This thing works also, now to get a spare cable and use this thing for the occasional emergency when a serial console is needed at work.

    If you don't already have a serial console setup...

    Just run a getty on /dev/palm and away you go.

    http://www.frotz.net/vt100/

  • OH MY LORD

    That bug is STILL around? I used to crash Telegard BBSes back in the day by trying to upload a file called COM1 or PRN or any number of reserved words!

    Absolutely unreal!

  • I recently got ahold of an older paralell-to-eithernet adapter, and after looking around, i found an old TI graphing calculator-paralell port (used primarily for connecting to a printer, not the standard graph links). We've been working on developing some sort of protocol/interface so that we could (at the minimum) ping a computer on a crossover cable using my TI-86...or somthing. Any ideas?
  • *shudder* the latency, the latency! and you thought that 15 hops to slashdot.org was bad... how about > 150 hops?

  • ...every Mac new enough to be worth using...

    I have two Macs that are still "worth using". One is a 66Mhz 601 and the other is a 120Mhz 604. Only the 604 has ethernet capability.

    Adding ethernet to a PC is ridiculously simple. It's a $15 PCI or ISA card.

  • I would argue that there are several strong reasons for not having the primary sync mechanism be ethernet. I'll just touch on each briefly:
    1. Configuration - Computer and Palm both plugged into network. How does the palm find the right computer to sync with?
    2. Security - How does the computer know that the palm is a legitimate user of it's services? This is a more solveable problem once you have dealt with the Configuration problem
    3. Robustness - Having an open TCP/IP server means that you may have additional security issues like denial of service attacks, and raises the 'necessary quality' of your product.
    4. Cost - RS232 serial connections are really dirt cheep (and the dragonball has hardware support). The USB probably costs more (I don't know exactly by how much) but Ethernet is the most expensive of the three, both in terms of hardware and computational power to drive the TCP/IP stack.

    Biggest isssues are probably the security and configuation issues. They would lead me to do RS232 or USB if I were designing these devices (disclaimer: I don't design these devices, but I do use them)

    - Mike

  • I'd argue that in today's world of increasingly available broadband (cable/DSL/wireless/etc.) there are nearly as many home users with ethernet as with USB.

    If you count the number with working USB vs. working Ethernet, the numbers are even more strongly in favor of Ethernet.

    Not to bash USB, but USB is just starting to work, even in the Windows world. The USB in the initial Win98, although much better than the previous add-on for Win95 still left a lot to be desired in the stability and functionality departments. The hardware vendors only in the past year or so have gotten the BIOSes working predictably and reliably with USB.

    And don't even get me started about Linux. I love Linux, I really do, but I'm likely to switch to W2K at home simply because more things that I need (like USB) work out of the box in W2K than in Linux. (As part of my Linux advocacy, I refuse to ever build kernels, since that is not a reasonable thing to expect end users to do. Go ahead, flame me, but if you live with Linux as a "real world" user has to, you'll quickly see we have a very long way to go.)

    I'll resurrect Scott McNealy's old Windows challenge for USB:

    Scenario 1) Let's take a nice Taurus 6-shot .38 Special revolver, place one round in the cylinder, and spin it. Place the gun against your head and pull the trigger. If it clicks, you walk, if it fires, bummer.

    Scenario 2) Let's take the first USB-equipped machine we find as we walk around. Plug in an off-the-CompUSA-shelf USB component other than a keyboard or mouse and see if it works as designed. If it works, you walk, if not, the revolver gets loaded and bummer, you're shot dead.

    Which would you choose?

    Nearly all of us recognize that the odds are better at Russian roulette than they are at getting USB devices (or new software applications, as Scott originally framed the challenge) to work as designed out of the box.

    Add a third scenario, that of plugging in an Ethernet device and seeing if it works as designed, and it's suddenly quite clear that this is the safest of all three alternatives.

    The only downside to Ethernet as a peripheral interconnect is that a lot of people don't have Ethernet hubs because they are either using crossover cables or the modem has the pairs crossed internally.

    Why we don't build hubs/switches into our computers' NICs or cable modems is beyond me. (It's also beyond me why anyone would bother to build any PC anymore, especially a laptop, without on-board Ethernet.) It does add a little to the price, as do USB hubs in monitors, but the difference is that Ethernet hubs nearly always interoperate with other Ethernet gear, while USB hubs often create problems...

  • I'd argue that in today's world of increasingly available broadband (cable/DSL/wireless/etc.) there are nearly as many home users with ethernet as with USB.

    You're probably right... unfortunately, I don't live in a thriving metropolis blessed with DSL and/or duplex cable.

  • I have also been thinking along these lines. What would need to be explored to make it effective is: 1) Bandwidth and range - I think you were talking about IR, but radio has more potential in both these areas, I think. 2) The possibility of hacking diverse devices (smart phones, alphanumeric pagers, etc) to participate in such a network. 3) The applications of such a network during its interim phases - wireless LANS and the like before full internet connectivity is possible. I think there is alot of potential here. Unfortunately, my background is software, and I have no clue how the bandwidth works or how to get inside the guts of cellphones. I do, however, have a whole bunch of clever uses for such a network while in its infancy. For example, a non-virtual ICQ. You can see and chat with anyone currently accessible to you. I say non-virtual because at first you would only see people within a mile or two. This would be neat for situations where you want to meet someone in a big city, etc. I like this idea because it flies in the face of the current business models of wireless companies, who plan on making big bucks on services, which this would totally circumvent.

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