Originally Posted by TheAnimus
But wouldn't it be better to have it automatically switch its wifi off, if its not been used for say 30 minuites, and then have a button that you push to turn wifi on? That way when you pick up your laptop, you first whack that button. Surf for as long as you like, and 30 min after the last transmission, pop goes the weasel?
That goes a long way to defeating the point of Wi-Fi, particularly the long range of the N standard... if you have to walk across your house in order to turn the wireless on then you're going to get pretty tired of it and probably turn the feature off. You can already mostly achieve that "killer feature" anyway... wall sockets have an off switch! Time based usage can also be configured using a socket timing device, which are available in most hardware stores!
What is needed is a remote wake-up, similar to a wake-on-lan signal.... for wireless devices to be able to broadcast a "hey i'm here, switch up to active mode please" to an access point which it has previously been paired with and given permission to power up and which is just listening in a low power passive mode... it'd add a few seconds to connect times, but that would be an acceptable trade-off and many times better than having to walk over and poke a switch!
*Copyright that idea...*