Reporting from the road — sort of
As editors of RuggedPCReview.com, we’re probably better equipped than most to report anytime, anywhere, and under any conditions. After all, we not only have access to the latest and greatest mobile computing and communications gear, but much of that gear is designed to go just about anywhere.
The reality is a bit different, as we learned the hard way on a stretch of several weeks on the road and high sea. Testing underwater still and video camera equipment around some of the West Indies islands in the Caribbean, we wished for two things. One was that cell service were truly global, without all the hassles of having to switch SIM cards, sign up for international service, and fear the ever-present phone company gotchas that can result in huge charges on the next monthly bill. Another was that the GPS apps on our various devices were not so completely dependent on cell coverage to work. They all have many gigs of storage, so why not include a reliable and reasonably precise base map that always works, no matter where you are on the globe?
So while on the good ship Caribbean Explorer II, we were essentially cut off from the world. There are WiFi hotspots in ports, of course, but most are locked and the signal of those that are not was usually insufficient for anything other than frustration and perhaps a Facebook update or two.
A subsequent extended road trip to the great state of Tennessee promised better coverage. Between a MacBook Pro, two iPads, and two iPhones, keeping in touch and getting work done seemed doable. To some extent anyway. It’s amazing what all can be done workwise on a tablet these days but, truth be told, it can take a lot longer to get even simple things done. That’s where the MacBook was supposed to come in. The big 15-inch Apple laptop doesn’t have WWLAN, though, and so we signed up for AT&T’s 5GB US$50 hotspot service on one of the iPads.
Why paying for the iPad hotspot when there’s WiFi coverage virtually everywhere these days? Because that WiFi coverage often isn’t there when you need it most, or it doesn’t work right, or sitting in a busy Starbucks just isn’t the best place to get work done. The hotspot worked fine until, after just three days on the road, a message came up on the iPad saying we had used up the allotted 5GB and it was time to pay up for more. What? Apparently three days of moderate browsing and some work was enough to go through a full 5GB. I have no idea how that bit of activity could use so much data, but it did. That bodes ill for a future where increasingly everything is metered. Data usage is never going to go down, and metered data looks to be an incredible goldmine for the telcos and a massive pain for users.
In the end, what it all boiled down to was that, yes, we’re living in a connected world, but no, you’re not really connected all the time and you can’t ever rely on having service. And, surprisingly, digital data coverage remains a frustratingly analog experience. There’s coverage, maybe, somehow, but it’s marginal and you may or may not get a connection, and if you do it may not be good or persistent enough to get actual work done. From that standpoint, it’s a mobile world, but one that requires you to be stationary to actually make it work.
I often tell people that I can work anywhere, anytime, as long as I have internet access. But that’s only true to some extent. Tablets and smartphones can only do so much. Even a full-function laptop is not likely to include every utility, file and tool that’s on the desktop in the office. “The Cloud” truly cannot be relied on. And neither can data service.
All of that will change someday, and hopefully someday soon. As is, the connected world is a work in progress.