Time for Wireless…or Wireless for Time

♬To everything – turn, turn, turn
There is a season – turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven
…
A time to gain, a time to lose..♬

Words and Music by Ecclesiastes/Seeger, recorded by The Byrds.

The one thing that none of us can bank is time. So how do we best make use of our time – especially these days – given that we have to spend a certain amount of it waiting or on trains or in transit somewhere? How can we check our email, read (and edit) attachments, check our appointments, refer to our contact information, send IM’s or chats and generally make the most out of our 24 hour allotment of time?

There are Smartphones from such suppliers as RIM (BlackBerry), Apple (iPhone), Nokia, HP, Palm, Samsung, Motorola and other manufacturers), regular cell phones with data and/or email access and laptops with Wi-Fi access or data access via a cell network modem.

Cell phones are great for cell calls; however creating text or email messages on a cell phone number pad are all but impossible..the multiple key combinations to create even the most rudimentary of messages would try the patience of a saint.

Smartphones take things up a notch with their Querty keypads that allow nimble thumbs to craft replies to emails and work on documents. If they come with a data plan, then surfing the web is increasingly possible as web pages are designed with the smaller screens on the mobile devices in mind…

However, for some the full size of the laptop keyboard is really the only alternative to intense work, assuming that you have the space to work from wherever you may be.

So how do you work …wirelessly …on a laptop? Wi-Fi is all over the urban areas, but finding a suitable Wi-Fi hotspot and provider can be a challenge. There are many providers and the data plans vary. Securing a contract with the provider that will give you the greatest number of Wi-Fi hotspots in all the locations that you may find yourself is a bit of a puzzle. But there are places where Wi-Fi will not be accessible –- and you may consider cellphone network data access as an alternative. Again, coverage by provider varies and the type of service also varies. A 1X system will take 2 mins to transmit 1MB of data; a 3G network would do this in 12 seconds. The quality of signal also varies by location.

Wi-Fi providers include Telus, Bell, Rogers, Fido, Fatport and Boingo. Cell phone network access is available from most of the cell phone providers via a USB modem or PCMCIA data modem card. Data plans and terms vary.

Which ever way you turn, it seems that time is either ours to gain or ours to lose…