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Benson's Avatar
Posts: 4,930 | Thanked: 2,272 times | Joined on Oct 2007
#1169
Originally Posted by tso View Post
i guess my dream would be a collection of devices doing specifically one task and exchanging data over a wireless band. why? because of one of them breaks, you only have to replace it rather then having to replace the whole...
Which will remain a dream because wireless spectrum isn't getting any opener, and amounts of data that need transferred are going up. That means higher radio power.

I'm pretty solidly in the interchangeable-radio-module camp, for now; unfortunately, there's no real good standard for an N800-sized device now. ExpressCard/34's a bit big, and typically have huge antennae outside the form factor, while mini-PCIe is maybe a touch big (half-size is dead on, though), but don't include antennae at all; both of them are pretty good though, as they permit USB connections, which are adequate for most data links, and certainly for all the data the tablet can use.

Maybe some such USB-only internal form-factor should be standardized, but in the meantime, I'd be tempted to abuse one of those standards by making a non-conforming PCIe-less (but otherwise fully-compatible) version, if I was in charge of designing such a device.

There's always SDIO, and I suppose (if they could scrounge up 3 SD interfaces on the N900) that would actually make sense; 2GB (make that 4GB) internal, one internal (SDIO-capable) slot for either WiMAX or storage, and one external. One model covering the entire N800/N810W(/N810UMTS/etc.) range. Still, I'd rather two free SDs and a separate USB-based data slot. You can always rig up a flash drive for that, too.