jules blog

That’s a bit strong I suppose. They might not be the devil but they certainly have the fallen angel on speed dial.

The main beef with USB wireless, printer, and just about any other peripheral driver you can think of is that so many of them are poorly written. While it’s a better state of affairs than it was operating systems still crash enough without wantonly adding third-party generated instability. You know, by doing a crazy thing like printing or connecting to the ‘net when you’re out and about.

Let’s not forget that as operating systems evolve into new versions old drivers might not work and might not be upgraded. That perfectly good printer you’ve got sitting on your desk might be a large paperweight if you are forced to upgrade. Scanners are a little more forgiving, thankfully, due to a standard called TWAIN. However, the proliferation of multifunction printer/scanner/fax combos is proprietary and unforgiving. Keep your computer up to date or send a fax? Tough choices.
If that wasn’t enough punishment there’s the self induced serial laptop swapping sickness from which I suffer. Try as I might I can’t help myself. New laptops arrive with whizzy features that I can’t resist. What will be next? An Air? A ThinkPad X300? Keeping the data on the drives in sync isn’t half the problem you might think. Typing svn up at the end of the day keeps me in sync and not as worried about data loss as I could be.

The latest EVDO card of choice is the Ovation U727 from Sprint. They run a lovely, fast network and Rev A. EVDO is pretty special. And as you might imagine the card comes with a CDROM and the Mac needs a set of drivers to get it up and running. In this case the driver has been stable, OS X isn’t doing funky things when the card is in use. Phew. Dodged another one there.

An Ubuntu Linux-based ThinkPad isn’t half as happy. The instructions to get it working are something that your granny isn’t going to be able to do by herself. The U727 has a built-in Micro SD slot reader which has further complicated my testing of things. Then there’s the dire warning from the Sprint setup guide:

Maximum connection speed is limited by the current generic usbserial driver to approximately less than 500Kbps.

Oh dear.

On Linux there is no signal strength monitoring, no PRL updates, no GUI to help you connect, and no official support. On Linux nobody can hear you scream.

Which got me thinking: Why on earth don’t these devices just plug into the ethernet port?

• No drivers! Not one!
• All modern operating systems have the built-in ability to get an IP address via DHCP which requires no configuration at all;
• There’s a lot that can be powered with a USB port and, clearly, POE isn’t an option on a laptop;
• Unlike PC Card or Express card solutions this would get the antenna away from the computer. That cuts down on RF noise and makes the card more effective; and
• Control could come from a mini Web server built into the device itself.

Can’t you just visualize a bit of nifty ajax or Flash in the Web server? It should be easy to show connection speeds, signal strength, IP address, and all that jazz. If you’ve ever connected from a pay-for-usage Wifi nextwork there’s a nifty trick you can do to force people to an authentication page before they get on the ‘net. That could work nicely here.

A vendor of such a device would never have to inflict another crappy USB driver on its customers again. Support costs would surely go down. Nerds would evangelize like crazy.

They might even buy one for themselves and one for granny.