Blog of a Long Distance Worker Tech

The blog about mobile tech

Monthly Archives: October 2008

WiFi or 3G – Which is best for the mobile worker?

There used to be a time when you would sit back in your hotel, and dig out how you could connect to their WiFi. This might be anything from a ramshackle collection of consumer WAPs connected back to an ADSL service, to something much classier which was the full Corporate option. You generally got something, and it was real pleasant – although certainly in Europe it was not generally free, and could cost upwards of £5 for 2 hours of usage, limited to 150MB during that time. This was shared with everyone around you and you had to either be very trusting (i.e. stupid) or employ encryption techniques for your access overlaid on their network.

We suffered but then came 3G and low cost tariffs that gave you 1GB or more limits at upwards of 350kbps. These limits have increased over time so now you have pretty much unlimited 3G connectivity for less than £30 per month. This access was their for you to use very much anywhere and certainly was very favourable considering that you only had to need to use the Internet for 12 hours a month to make it financially viable, and this is even lower cost now with today’s tariffs.

So what is the best recommendation for the mobile worker? Well unless you are working in the Outer Hebrides then it is 3G all the way, providing you with access whenever you want it, wherever you want it, with more security (no nasty people packet capturing next door) and (if you travel once a week or more) it is generally going to be cheaper.

You can also now spread the love locally if you are part of a team, by getting hold of one of the now many 3G WiFi Routers, that take your dongle or card and share it on a local WiFi network, great for setting up that temporary remote office. This is also condoned and encouraged now by companies like T-Mobile in the UK. So get out there and get yourself a 3G adapter and always make sure you can work (although as I have posted, not a great experience at 70mph on the London Midland Train line).

Planes, Trains and Automobiles – 3G Data on the move

Well maybe not planes right now, but certainly we need to talk about Trains and

Automobiles when it comes to using 3G data on the move. Well let me put it this way – unless you do not move it is simply one of the most frustrating exercises you can ever experience.

The issue is in the movement through the various coverage zones along your chosen route, whether this is on a train or in a car (obviously you are not driving). The 3G modem I use is the Huawei E220 that comes in various brandings in the UK. This is an HSDPA modem that can run up to 3.6Mbps (oh yes, I believe that one … not).

Now the general experience on the route is 3G…HSDPA… GPRS… no service… GPRS… 3G… no service… GPRS… HSDPA… 3G… HSDPA…no service. The other aspect of the experience is that on every transition, you have 30 seconds to 1 minute of nothing as the modem software tells you that you are connected but NO data actually transfers.

Now I do not believe that these are all coverage issues as this happens within the London M25 boundaries where 3G is pretty much 100%, there seems to be a real issue with the transitions between these different standards that kills the experience completely. Now I do not know whether this is totally to do with my E220 (I had another branded 3G modem that experienced something similar without the HSDPA transition which makes it unlikely) but this ‘roaming’ issue is something that is not experienced on voice calls.

There is hope however, as you can ‘minimise’ the issue by removing the optimisation out of the modem software – by setting it to one specific technology such as GPRS or 3G/HSDPA, although better results are experienced by setting it to purely GPRS. This makes it slower and harder to manage but it does deliver the most important characteristic of in-motion data – consistency.

Has anyone else got experience or hints and tips on how to improve the experience?

Laptop or Smartphone

This one is the biggie – as a mobile worker, a long distance remote worker, what is the main technology you need to do your job? Do you believe you need your hulking 15″ or 17″ Laptop that weighs 3kgs (6.5lbs)? Is that really a portable solution? Or are you the newly born iPhone convert who only needs that few small inches of screen and 6 hours of battery life? Which is it? Nick Wingfield at the Wall Street Journal has just written an interesting set of thoughts that at the headline level, imply that we all should be the iPhone convert by now.

However I believe that the choices as to which technology is best, is down to exactly what you have to do and where you have to do it. In fact for the generalist like myself, I see a continuum of devices as being needed for the mobile worker with a very important cornerstone at the centre – decent and effective data synchronisation. This is not fully the cloud world view – oh no, I see the need for the cloud to be part of a complete solution that ends up with data spread from device to device, over the cloud and in the cloud – pretty much of a whole atmosphere approach.

Right now I have been experimenting with Microsoft Live Mesh as that cornerstone, combined with hosted Microsoft Exchange, Activesync, Evernote, Box.net, Logmein and JungleDisk. Some of these are more mature than others (Exchange and Activesync – although I have to be very Microsoft based from a device perspective), some are more small business than enterprise (Logmein/JungleDisk), and some are really flaky – Live Mesh. Right now (let us leave Mesh out of it for now), I have a very effective ecosystem for tech use combining two Netbooks, four other laptops, two mobile smartphones and three separate working locations – to the extent that I can (and have) suffer individual device failures and gone straight back to work – an important characteristic for an independent consultant like myself.

Now back to Live Mesh, this has showed promise and sort of does work but suffers from a failure to sync certain folders for no apparent reason, something I have shared with Paul Thurrott of winsupersite.com. I have stuck with it though, and not returned to Microsoft’s Foldershare or gone to competitors as yet although that is getting close.

So what sort of user do you believe you are? Smartphone or Laptop or somewhere in between, or somewhere else?

Sort of Open for Business

Hi, my name is Ian Nock. Over the last couple of decades, I have been working in the tech business in a variety of positions, most recently in the Digital TV arena. In this time, I have made use of the developing technology of the roaming knowledge worker – no matter how poor it has been, how expensive or how tricky. This has ranged from portable computers that were heavier than today’s desktops through to using GSM mobile phones for picking up email from the deepest south of Poland… boy Exchange sync was painful then.

Through this blog and its posts, I aim to post topical help and advice about the use of todays’ technology to make the roaming worker’s life easier, simpler and more effective. Sometimes it may take a diversion or two but hey that is up to me. This is, of course, when it opens fully for business… which will actually be when I have posted some content on it and opened up to the floodgates of the search crawlers…

By the way, this site is the evolution of an older site run on a much more personal basis, which can be still found on http://nocky100.wordpress.com. That site will continue but will change a bit as I focus my long distance view on this site. Its future is to be reviewed, particularly its title. We shall see.

Oh, and please feel free to comment away on the main posts when they appear… who knows, if you have a good opinion you might be asked to contribute more directly.