Room Service and Wi-Fi

I had the somewhat unfortunate task of running to Indianapolis last week to try and solve some problems we were having with a project down there. I would love to make a whiny posting about how when a company diverges from its core competency unpredictable results can occur.

But that is not what I wanted to talk about. I have been a road warrior of sorts for many years now. When I think of what it used to take to try and function while out of the office compared to the tools we have today, I am truly amazed.

In my earliest incarnation as a road warrior, back in the early 80’s, I used to use a 300 baud acoustic coupler with my “luggable” KayPro computer, a hefty 26 pounds. Still, I could log into our Unix box, post orders and handle email. You had to be pretty nimble to dial the hotel phone, wait for the negotiation tones, slam in the handset to the coupler and try to get the CP/M terminal program connected.

 

The next huge step was my trusty Radio Shack Model 1400 LT. It had an internal 1200bps modem. Still probably weighed about 15 pounds, but it ran this fancy new operating system, MSDOS. I discovered a great terminal program called ProComm which worked admirably for me. (As a side note, there really was a time when Usenet was useful. I was the first person to post ProComm out in the wild. These were still the days before the Internet, so everything was done via UUCP links. I have often thought I should get some sort of commission from the ProComm developers. Once I posted it to Usenet, it quickly became a de-facto standard) Hotels were starting to get with the program with many of the room phones having the modular RJ11 jack. Still, my traveling kit always included a screwdriver and some alligator clips to modify the phone if required.

Well, enough reminiscing. The point here is that when I went to Indy, I checked into a reasonably nice hotel. Once checked in, I fire up my notebook, use the provided password for Wi-Fi Internet access and I am in my virtual office. Broadband access allows me to not only handle my email, but remote into our servers and my desktop at the office.

A quick call to room service and I am set. Compared to the days of scribbled notes and endless phone calls and faxes (at about $10 a page from my friendly hotel), this is really living.

Now, about diverging from our core competency….