Cottleston Pie

Recently, I went wireless with my laptop connection to the Internet. As I setup my new apartment, that has worked out brilliantly. I've got almost all wires confined to one piece of furniture: TV, VCR, DVD player, Cable-modem, Wireless-base-station. My laptop roams, and consistent with the desires made in my earlier post, this post is being made from my sofa. I can also use my laptop at my desk in the study and continue to access the Internet without me stringing any wires.

This is particular significant since I don't own the apartment. Back in high school, I wanted the main home stereo system (with the CD player!) to play music at opposite corners of the house. So, my dad and I drilled some holes in the floor and ran wire through the basement so the stereo could drive speakers in either or both rooms. It was a great success. That type of modification isn't practical here.

So, my next problem, what about my stereo in my apartment? I want to be able to stream music to it from my laptop, either mp3s or Internet radio, whether I'm on the sofa or in the study. It was a trouble that would have had Colonel Mustard flustered.

Mr. Jobs knew how to scratch my itch: AirPort Express. I picked one up at the Austin Apple Store (payed $5 more than I would have on Amazon + local sales tax, but the sales tax is money back into my own community minus that which falls into the hands of Texas conservative politicos which seek to control or destroy my community). It's an amazing little device. Now, I can stream my music to my stereo from my laptop anywhere in the apartment, like now, sitting on the sofa, listening to Solsbury Hill.

The Express is amazingly small, just a little larger and in the same style as my iPod power adapter. It uses 802.11g and WPA, so my everything on my network remains at the faster g standard and using the WPA security protocol.

I considered Slim Devices Squeezebox which is a neat little device, but it was considerably more expensive. The wireless version would have required that I degrade my wireless network to the slower 802.11b protocol (mixed g and b) and use the known-broken WEP security protocol. However, for about the same price as a wireless Squeezebox, one could purchase the wired version and a considerably more capable Belkin wireless router. I avoided the additional cost and complexity of this strategy by going with the Express, which has one additional excellent feature...

It's so small that I have a very handy portable wireless base station that I can take on the road. I'll definitely be taking it to Maine the next time I visit my family there.

Now my problem is this darn power-cord. I believe my laptop battery is dying. 2-3 years is the normal lifetime for a battery of this type, and mine is 3.5 years old. I used to get hours out of it. Now it always seem to run out of power quickly (half an hour maybe?). Even with a good battery, I imagine all this wireless broadcasting would be draining. We need better portable power options. Fortunately, in maybe three years, fuel cell technologies may come to laptops in a practical way and improve the situation.