Re: why does the 360 still not have built-in wifi?

On Dec 16, 11:57 am, "Morgan" <Nos...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Almighty N (Blig, Creamy and Jonah's owner) wrote:

Onboard wireless has been standard on the
majority of laptops for several years now, the same is now true for
other
consoles in the current generation, not to mention modern mobile
phones,
media extenders, and PDAs.

Laptops are intended to be used out of the household

This is one intended use. They are also intended to be (and are often
exclusively) used inside a single household/office building/school.

(regardless of
whether people may use them in the household). Wi-fi is more the
domain of coffee shops and libraries than actual households

Not true at all.

where
there's generally only one desktop PC hooked up where the internet/
phone/cable guy ran the wires.

Mobile phones and PDAs again are devices meant to be used "on the go"
and wi-fi was designed with that intent in mind.

No it wasn't.  It was designed to be used as a means of connectivity without
wires.  The ability to roam from one network to another is not a feature of
wireless, a wired network could do the exact same job by having accessible
Ethernet ports.

Wireless networks are simply not common in households.

Yes they are, I believe I may has discussed this with you before. Wireless
routers for internet access have become a standard piece of equipment
provided
free by ISPs, it is certainly more common to have wireless access to
broadband
than it is to have an Ethernet port in close proximity to your living room
TV, even if there's one in the same room, who wants a length of Cat5 tacked
around the skirting board.  A quick scan from my laptop shows 5 home
wireless networks in range of my house, I'd say that that's pretty much
common usage.

When I first got broadband access and cable tv in my new house it
looked like this:

Cable wire in front room going up the stairs to my bedroom where it
was split with a T (one to bedroom tv; other to cable modem next to
it). I would then share the cat5 from the cable modem between my old
laptop (no wireless built-in) sitting next to tv on tray table and the
xbox. Was a minor annoyance to swap cable and recycle cable modem
power to resync new hookup, and I could only do one or the other, not
both simultaneously.

After sis got a desktop pc, for xmas later that year I bought a
linksys wrt54g and moved the T connector, cable modem, and router to
the bottom of the stairs and installed wirelesss pcmcia nic card in
laptop and a usb stick on the desktop pc at other end of house. I
also got a 50-ft cat5e to run up the stairs alongside the cable wire
for the xbox.

The only thing I've changed recently is the desktop pc is now in the
front room across from the router but it's still set up wirelessly.
If the 360's wireless adapter wasn't so expensive I'd go totally
wireless and get rid of the 50ft cat5 going up the stairs. Like
Morgan mentioned he can see 5 routers from his location but there
might be more with ssid broadcast turned off. At one time I could see
up to 10 on my street alone. As people started learning how to secure
them better they started disappearing from site surveys. I especially
get a kick out of how an entire neighborhood that keeps the ssid
turned on will keep a common theme with naming their ssid's like
naming all of them after snow white and the seven dwarfs, etc.
.

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