Bandwidth seems to be available and sufficiently good for mobile working but the wide disparity between upload and download speeds remains a big issuePhoto: Shutterstock
Written in a hotel coffee shop 12 miles from Cardiff and dispatched to silicon.com via a free 50Mbps wi-fi link.
For over five years now I have been increasingly working in the cloud, gradually edging away from the old towards the new. But today I take a larger step than ever before.
Goodbye to my 15-inch screen and dual-core PC. Farewell to my 500GB hard drive and CD slot. I’m not entirely sure about this move. But it’s hello solid-state memory, single-core CPU, 13-inch screen and a greater dependence on connectivity.
I struggle with change like the next man, and it is generally a bit of a painful experience. But the work I do and the challenges I face demand that, at the very least, I eat my own dog food.
How could I profess to understand the cloud if I weren’t a part of it? And how could I advise on remote working and virtual companies if I wasn’t participating? I couldn’t.
Pushing for change is not an option - it’s what I do and it’s what I have always done. I have to experiment to discover and innovate.
So here I am, first week out with new kit and a more advanced mode of working. Two things triggered this change. First, my trusty 15-inch laptop is awaiting new parts and needs some repairs after recent condensation damage in the tropics.
Secondly, looking at bandwidth and its availability as I travel, I seem to be able to find sufficient of both commodities for my needs so far - although the predominance of bandwidth asymmetries poses a real challenge and operational limitation.
This graph shows the quality of bandwidth I have used recently and how it is vastly better outside the UKImage: Peter Cochrane/silicon.com
Certainly, I could do with faster and fatter connections with symmetric upload and download speeds. But right now networks seem just about to suffice, provided I…
