Welcome again to the wonderful but sometimes weird world of wireless comms, written by Joel Young, CTO of Digi International.Did the world's axial tilt just change?
As far as I know and after surveying the world's top scientists, there is no evidence of any kind of recent shift of the earth's axial tilt. Yet, I understand why people everywhere may be wondering about this.
From my own recent experience, something in the world has recently changed. Being a person in my mid 40s, my professional career has lived through the evolution of Microsoft Windows.
As such, from Windows 3.1.1 to Windows 95/97 to Windows NT to Windows ME to Windows 2000 to Windows XP and the curse of Windows Vista, I, like many, have become accustomed to learning how to kill locked up applications with task manager, the need for the daily reboot and the benefit of the cleaning reinstall to clean up my system.
Nonetheless, my systems, no matter how much I increased the memory and processing speed, seemed to slow down over time. Meanwhile, being a Unix lover from my days at Bell Labs, I also stood by with admiration of the expansion of Linux, an offspring of Unix and Apple's decision to move their operating system to a stable Unix based kernel.
On the cell phone side, I had reluctantly migrated to Windows Mobile based phones in the hopes of making my life more productive, even though I knew sluggishness and instability was my destiny.
A year and a half ago, I abandoned the daily reboots of my Windows Mobile phone and gleefully followed the masses by embracing the iPhone 3G. Like it or not, the world was how I expected it would be.
In the last week, however, the foundation of all my expectations has been shaken by two independent experiences. First, I volunteered to become one of the evaluators of Windows 7 in our corporate environment.
Note, that because of my own terrible experiences with Windows Vista, I had dutifully remained on Windows XP, accepting the fact that my environment continued to get slower and slower in between more frequent cleaning reinstall cycles. Even though I'm running only a 32 bit version of Windows 7, I have found the experience amazingly satisfying.
My applications and environment has become down-right zippy and my user experience with intuitiveness, connectivity and stability has been surprisingly "Apple-like."
My second experience relates to my iPhone. After doing what I thought would be an innocuous iPhone software upgrade as part of a periodic sync, all of my non-Applie iphone applications suddenly refused to work.
I dutifully walked through all the troubleshooting steps. As each one failed, I was forced to do a complete restore of my iPhone, followed by a re-installation of all my applications. Ugh!
Since that time, my iPhone has gone into unresponsive lala land three times where I've had to resort to the double-button-hold system restart - an experience very similar to the curses of my old Windows Mobile Phones.
I suppose more data is needed to determine if something drastic has happened. Perhaps this is just a blip in the otherwise predictable trajectory. For now I'm going to enjoy the new found zippiness and stability of Windows 7 and pray that my iPhone returns to normal.
Previous Weird & Wireless:
Joel Young, VP of Research and Development and CTO at Digi International,
has more than 22 years of experience in developing and managing data
and voice communications. He joined Digi International in June 2000 and
in his current role he is responsible for research and development of
all of Digi's core products.
Prior to joining Digi, Joel was VP of Sales & Marketing at Transcrypt International where he was responsible for sales, marketing, and product development for all information security products. During his tenure at Transcrypt, he also served as VP of Product Development and VP of Engineering where he was responsible for engineering, research and product development for wireless communications products, cellular telephony, wireline telephony and land mobile radio, data security and specialized digital radio products.
He also served as District Manager for AT&T Business Communications Services where he was responsible for the creation and implementation of voice processing and network database strategies, including deploying new voice processing platforms into the AT&T switched network for private network and other outbound calling services.
On the cell phone side, I had reluctantly migrated to Windows Mobile based phones in the hopes of making my life more productive, even though I knew sluggishness and instability was my destiny.
A year and a half ago, I abandoned the daily reboots of my Windows Mobile phone and gleefully followed the masses by embracing the iPhone 3G. Like it or not, the world was how I expected it would be.
In the last week, however, the foundation of all my expectations has been shaken by two independent experiences. First, I volunteered to become one of the evaluators of Windows 7 in our corporate environment.
Note, that because of my own terrible experiences with Windows Vista, I had dutifully remained on Windows XP, accepting the fact that my environment continued to get slower and slower in between more frequent cleaning reinstall cycles. Even though I'm running only a 32 bit version of Windows 7, I have found the experience amazingly satisfying.
My applications and environment has become down-right zippy and my user experience with intuitiveness, connectivity and stability has been surprisingly "Apple-like."
My second experience relates to my iPhone. After doing what I thought would be an innocuous iPhone software upgrade as part of a periodic sync, all of my non-Applie iphone applications suddenly refused to work.
I dutifully walked through all the troubleshooting steps. As each one failed, I was forced to do a complete restore of my iPhone, followed by a re-installation of all my applications. Ugh!
Since that time, my iPhone has gone into unresponsive lala land three times where I've had to resort to the double-button-hold system restart - an experience very similar to the curses of my old Windows Mobile Phones.
I suppose more data is needed to determine if something drastic has happened. Perhaps this is just a blip in the otherwise predictable trajectory. For now I'm going to enjoy the new found zippiness and stability of Windows 7 and pray that my iPhone returns to normal.
Previous Weird & Wireless:
- Weird & Wireless: Best way to connect iPods for car audio
- Weird & Wireless: Why do we still have a land line phone?
- Weird & Wireless: What happened to AT&T and Bell Labs?
- Weird & Wireless: Why do we still have freephone numbers?
- Weird & Wireless: Practical use of wireless power over 10 feet
- Weird & Wireless: How can wireless power transmission work?
- Weird & Wireless: What about wireless power transmission?
- Weird & Wireless: How can light have temperature?
- Weird & Wireless: CFL, LED, and the incandescent bulb
- Weird & Wireless: Differences between lumens, lux, candelas and watts
- Weird & Wireless: "Line of Site" changing closer to the receiver
- Weird & Wireless: Passive antennas and gain
- Weird & Wireless: What happens when an RF hits an obstacle?
- Weird & Wireless: RF "Line of Sight"
- Weird & Wireless: Signals getting weaker in free space
- Weird & Wireless: Why don't wireless transmissions go on forever?
- Weird & Wireless: Adding wind power to your home
- Weird & Wireless: Why do mobile phones cause noise on my office speaker phone?
- Weird & Wireless: Does unplugging all your wall-warts really matter?
- Weird & Wireless: How did we end up with a kilowatt-hour?
- Weird & Wireless: Why is the use of cell phones discouraged around petrol pumps?
- Weird & Wireless: What is the difference between a human eye and an antenna?
- Weird & Wireless: What's the deal with electronics and radios on airplanes?
- Weird & Wireless: Can batteries be left out in the cold?
- Weird & Wireless: GPS, and how do those satellites know where I am?
- Weird & Wireless: Do microwave ovens cause cancer?
- Weird & Wireless: Why can I use a 2.4-GHz phone and 802.11 network at the same time?
Joel Young, VP of Research and Development and CTO at Digi International,
has more than 22 years of experience in developing and managing data
and voice communications. He joined Digi International in June 2000 and
in his current role he is responsible for research and development of
all of Digi's core products.Prior to joining Digi, Joel was VP of Sales & Marketing at Transcrypt International where he was responsible for sales, marketing, and product development for all information security products. During his tenure at Transcrypt, he also served as VP of Product Development and VP of Engineering where he was responsible for engineering, research and product development for wireless communications products, cellular telephony, wireline telephony and land mobile radio, data security and specialized digital radio products.
He also served as District Manager for AT&T Business Communications Services where he was responsible for the creation and implementation of voice processing and network database strategies, including deploying new voice processing platforms into the AT&T switched network for private network and other outbound calling services.
