NAB 2008: Wireless Impressiveness...Well, Mostly So

When I attend CES, I have to stick around Las Vegas afterwards for the IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics in order to soak up the technical presentations I crave. Conversely (and happily), compelling techie content is usually abundant at NAB. To wit, I spent large chunks of both Saturday and today at the Las Vegas Convention Center South Hall, attending various IEEE Broadcast Technology Society lectures and panel forums.

For some unknown reason, although the conference is thankfully shelling out free Wi-Fi to all attendees, the access point closest to the lecture halls refuses to allocate my laptop a DHCP assignment (a problem I’ve had before in this city):

Instead, I turned to my T-Mobile Dash, which I Bluetooth-tethered (with the phone therefore acting as a cellular modem) to the MacBook. I’ve complained about wireless spectrum corruption plenty of times before, and as you can see from the above screenshot, the 2.4 GHz band was pretty crowded at the show. A few minutes prior to my capture of the image, in fact, three times as many access points and ad hoc-broadcasting laptops were transmitting, but I didn’t think to snag a screenshot at the time so you’ll need to take my word for it (although below is a conceptually similar snapshot taken at a different Convention Center location earlier today).

Nonetheless, the Bluetooth link between phone and laptop remained rock-solid for multiple hours at a stretch (I also had the Dash USB-tethered to the MacBook, but only for phone battery-charging purposes, since a nearby AC outlet powered the laptop). And the downstream bandwidth delivered by T-Mobile’s Las Vegas EDGE service was surprisingly robust (though you can see why trying to do VoIP or another upstream bandwidth-demanding task over the link would be an underwhelming experience):

I even tackled a Sun Java update, although admittedly, had I known in advance how big the download payload would be, I probably would have deferred the upgrade invitation. And to that point, I subsequently waited until I got back to my even faster cellular router-served EV-DO Rev. 0 connection back at the hotel room to update my copy of CyberLink PowerDVD: