Wired is Better

The debate is not wired vs wireless, but wired vs Less power|bandwidth|security

Cables can be a frustration at times for many people, so being without them feels so freeing, . . to a point.

To go without wires/cables for signal still requires power, and if you don't have a wire to provide that, you certainly have batteries involved that have their own frustrations to deal with.

The Batteries.  

Replaceable or built in rechargeable?

How fast are they drained?

•  Fast enough, you get the replace or recharge process down pat?   They last long enough that you might not recognize the odd symptoms of the system for a bit before it clicks that it is time to do something with the batteries. (mouse in the middle of an epic gaming session, or keyboard in the middle of trying to write down that perfect award-winning idea)
• And for built-in rechargeable, at least until they can not hold a charge anymore.

Yes, there is wireless power transmission tech being developed, but:

•  Extra cost to have and to power
• extra energy inefficiently spread in the form of non-ionizing radiation through you. We are many years away from any chance of proving them safe. Are you volunteering your body as a test bed?

The bandwidth you can put through radio (wireless communications) is about the same as a few strands of wire or fibre in a cable. And the space of radio waves is shared.  So if you try and pack a room full of active Wi-Fi sharing systems, you generally will get less bandwidth to each than if they were wired connections. Especially if there are many other nearby users of those radio frequencies. How many Wi-Fi Access Points do you see near you? You are sharing bandwidth with them and anything else that might be using those particular frequencies that you can't see, such as Bluetooth on 2.4GHz and microwaves that are really noisy in that space.

Security is typically less with wireLess.  There are so many more ways of intercepting wireless(radio) traffic, most without any indications of such an interception. Encryption can be defeated, it is anything but perfect. The end points of any wireless system can be readily attacked from a distance in a whole range of tactics in addition to any possible wired attack vectors. 

Example:  With some USB dongles they can be used to take over the computers they were plugged in to.  When did you last update your dongle's firmware? 
Is your dongle subject to MouseJack or KeyJack attacks?

Personal health, a potential issue with adding more radio waves going through your body and those you may care about nearby.  Radio waves are a form of Radiation. While not the really nasty ionizing radiation of fission of big atoms like Uranium, it is still energy that we didn't evolve with. We are already seeing evidence of harm from cellphone radio waves.

So where ever you can, a wired/cabled/fibred connection is generally more reliable, secure, energy efficient, lower cost (especially over product lifetime), less resources used to make and operate, less impact on the surrounding environment. While there are always exceptions, they are just exceptions to a rule, not an invalidation of this point.

Wireless things have their place, but like everything in life, there are trade-offs along the way.  Make them deliberately rather than letting marketing brainwash you down any particular path as they won't tell you the hidden costs or risks. 

Glossary: 

Wire - single strand of an electrical conducting metal. One is almost never enough

Fibre/Fiber - a single strand of optical fibre, usually plastic, that carries light as the signal medium.

Cable - a bundle of wires or fibres in a protective bundle. i.e what we usually see.

Paying it forward

For a lot of people, graduating from college can be a time when they say that they are done with education, and they aren't going to think about college ever again.

Well Darlene has proved that yes you can graduate from college but education never stops. She has also shown that paying it forward to the next generation of business students is also important. Darlene has over the last couple of years been mentoring students through the Ten Thousand Coffee program at Centennial College. She enjoys getting to know the students and new graduates and is always willing to share her knowledge and experience with them.

Recently, Darlene was interviewed for the blog "It Started at Centennial" for her journey from being a student at Centennial College to now being a Mentor.

Where have we been?

You have probably noticed that we have been missing for the last while, and we can sum it up to this dementia journey, Covid-19 and now a possible a second dementia journey.

Covid-19 is something that we have all dealt with in the last 18 months and for us we added a dementia journey on top of it.  The dementia journey started in depth in January 2020 and for my dad it ended in January 2021.  Now we are thinking that we may be dealing with a similar journey with my mom. 

We have tried to be present as much as possible on social media but some of our blogs, etc., have suffered.  Hopefully now we can start this new path and get back to being present and create new content.

 

iTech

iTech is an IT conference that is held twice a year in Toronto. The spring show is held up near the airport, and the fall show is help in downtown Toronto. There are benefits of both of the show, and there are different vendors at both of the shows. This year there was a change, and we feel it didn’t go as well as it could have.

The spring show this year decided to charge for people to attend which is something they hadn’t done in the past. An initial email was sent out to past attendee, and you didn’t have to pay if you signed up by a given date which didn’t look too bad. After that time the cost was $20 and that included lunch, prize draws, and a reception at the end of the event. After a certain time, the price would then go up to $40 with the final price being $50 at the door.

We didn’t think the $20 would be a bad price and even $40 or $50 weren’t too bad considering the show and what you could get out of the overall show. What started to get frustrating was the number of discount offers that offered after the $40 time was reached. Most of the time if you were receiving emails from iTech you’d get a discount code taking the price back down to $20. What got me was even the day of the show there was a discount coupon so that even if you decided last minute to go to the show, it was still $20 at the door. If you were going to give the discount why not just keep the price at $20 and not do the roller coaster of the pricing. For someone that might have paid the higher price, it would have been extremely frustrating to know that someone walking up could have got a lower price just by simply being on a mailing list.  What would have made more sense was for iTech to not send the discounts rather have that as an option for the vendors/sponsors to send to their lists.

There are still so many people that think being able to get into a show for free is a given. There are times when getting into some shows for free is nice but also knowing that there might be some cost is something being in business involves. A cost for a lot of business owners and employees is the time that they are losing away from the office, but there is the benefit learning what products and services they could use to solve business problems in addition to maybe making some other connections and getting other business out of the conference as well learning. Each conference will have its cost, and you will need to weigh the benefits of them to ensure you are getting what you want out of the event.

For iTech, the biggest benefit for us is to see what is new in the industry and to meet up with some of the vendors that we have seen in the past to hear what is new. There are sessions offered, and they vary in level from the very basic to more technical, and you have to read the descriptions to ensure that the session is what you want.

iTech can be a good day of networking, and it is something that you need to understand when you go to it. Just thinking that you will have a lot of taking a-ways isn’t something that you are going to have. We have found some years we get a couple of good ideas and other years we may not get a lot of details, but we have seen what is new in the industry as well as reconnect with people that we know to maintain those connections.

Our overall review of iTech this spring is the price roller coaster was a bit frustrating and may have impacted how people registered for the event. The number of vendors/sponsors were lower this year as well, and that might have also impacted attendance. There were a few people that said they wouldn’t pay $20 to attend the show even if they got lunch after going to the event for years and not having to pay at all.

Why we are here

Konecny Consulting's purpose is to help bring out the best in our customers.

This blog is to explore and share some of our observations, findings and views about the industry.  We hope to be able to show some of what we see at the various events and the industry as a whole.

Our posting will be as things happen rather than to a fixed schedule, so please subscribe to the available options so you will be notified when there are new posts.