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Mobile computing vs. wireless

Can you help me define mobile computing as a general category and wireless as a subset of mobile computing?

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Wireless is a very broad category, which includes everything from fixed wireless applications to mobility applications. Mobile computing is the crossover between the two. If you are talking 802.11 wireless LAN, which currently does not support mobility (but will support portability in the future), then we are talking "wireless," but if you are talking mobile data using technologies such as GPRS or 1XRTT for access of mobile devices such as mobile phones and laptops, then you are talking mobility. There is thus not a good clear "definition." Instead, there are varying degrees of mobility/portability offered by various technologies.

This was first published in August 2001

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