Paul Willetts

Wireless is great for what it is intended, but can be a major problem for whole class use. A wired system should give 100 megs of data to each of the connected machines and a wireless system will give 54 megs at the moment (more in the future) shared between the number of machines in range of it. One of the local first schools has an older system with air units that give 11 megs and they try and run 22 machines at the same time, not a good idea! Another problem is that as the distance from the air unit increases, the data rate falls off rapidly. For the staff to use for electronic registration, reports etc it is a godsend, try it with a full class trying to surf the net, load and save large graphic files etc it’s a waste of time. All of these problems have solutions so there is a way on making a wireless system work, but for now its best to use a normal workstation for most things and the laptops for the jobs that are suited to it, just keep charging the battery.

Paul

Hi

I am Paul Willetts Network and Communications Manager at Haybridge High School in Worcestershire.

Into computers and Amateur Radio.

Radio from 1963 and computers from 1980, it was easier to type to someone and take my time replying, when maybe I didn’t understand what they were saying.

Not much to say other than I try to provide the tools for the teachers to do their job.