Why Your Company Needs to be Wireless Ready
The remote and mobile worker population is at 78 million employees and growing. From traveling executives to repair technicians, this wireless workforce includes millions of employees who work in the field and rarely if ever sit at a desk, much less frequent a main office. These mobile workers need to stay connected to what's going on in their organization. As a result, in order for your company to stay competitive in the marketplace, wireless communication has become an everyday necessity.
Integrated Wireless vs. PC Cards
The biggest obstacle mobile workers face is the downtime they experience from slow transmission speeds caused by internal and external interference. The amount of interference a user experiences varies based on their laptop. However, it has been proven that mobile workers who use laptops with PC cards experience the most interference and mobile workers who use laptops with integrated wireless experience the least amount of interference.
The Toughbook Advantage:
- Toughbooks have embedded OEM modules that are shielded against interference caused by noise and heat.
- Toughbooks have integrated antennas that are located next to the LCD which provides for an unblocked transmission area.
- Toughbooks provide users with the most robust reception available in the marketplace.
- Toughbooks provide users an integrated system that provides the user with a longer life expectancy for the laptop and the battery.
Internal Interference
Laptop users with PC cards experience more internal RF and heat interference because the card is located right next to the noise and heat-generating components like the CPU. Do you remember watching TV and the screen would go fuzzy when other electrical appliances were used at the same time? The fuzzy screen on your TV was caused by RF interference. The same type of RF interference can be experienced by the PC card in a laptop. Additional interference is caused by these components from the heat they generate. Heat can cause a user to experience frequency shifts and less-than-optimal performance from a laptop. And, it will degrade the laptop's internal components. Panasonic understands the major causes of interference and has designed laptops with goal of minimizing it.
External Interference
Laptop users experience external interference, not only from the location of the antenna, but also from their work environment. And, other computer companies don't appear to take the work environment into consideration when they continue to insert PC cards into their laptops. When a worker is mobile, the PC card is likely to get hit and possibility disconnected. This situation is easy to fix but can create additional downtime. The other most common problem involves pieces of the broken PC card causing internal damage to the laptop. This situation can be more severe and costly to fix. There is also the issue of environmental interference caused by the transmission area. The first set of pictures below shows how the PC card's horizontal radiation pattern is blocked by the open LCD. The second set of pictures shows how the PC card's vertical radiation pattern is blocked by the surface the user is working on.
The Evolution of Wireless Data
In the beginning, data transmissions were extremely slow. But as demand has grown in the marketplace, new technologies have been developed to provide users with real time email and communication with internal databases.
The Wireless Roadmap
As the marketplace as evolved through the years, wireless technologies have evolved as well. The chart below outlines this evolution.
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