WI-FI Projectors: Keep The Cables

Beam your slides? Nice idea, but?

Tired of fiddling with cables when you make a presentation? A new generation of Wi-Fi?enabled projectors let you transmit a PowerPoint show wirelessly from a notebook 150 feet away. In theory, this would allow several people to easily present from their own notebooks in rapid succession. But the reality fell short in our tests.

We looked at four shipping projectors that had wireless connectivity options: NEC's LT260, Sharp's Notevision PG-M25X, Sony's VPL-PX15 SuperSmart, and Toshiba's TLP-T501U (see the chart below). All four offer 1024-by-768 resolution and a slot for an 802.11b (Wi-Fi) PC Card.

Though we were generally impressed with the quality of the displays, they cost at least $1000 more than similar units without wireless capability. Also, setup can take as much time as hooking up a cable--and don't plan on presenting a multimedia extravaganza.

We tested the projectors by using a Windows XP?based Compaq notebook with built-in Wi-Fi capability to transmit a PowerPoint presentation.

Limited Connections

Some units came with a Wi-Fi card that had already been configured for ad hoc (peer-to-peer) networking--useful if your location lacks an existing wireless network. If you want to demo a live Web site, however, you must connect to the Internet via an access point or gateway (in infrastructure mode)--something you can do with all of the projectors except the Sharp.

Setup--including changing the notebook's wireless network settings to match those of the projector being tested--took 20 to 30 minutes. Each model comes with software for transmitting images and presentations wirelessly. The Sony unit runs Windows CE apps for viewing presentations and images that you transfer to the projector.

Unfortunately, when we at last displayed our PowerPoint test file, we quickly discovered a major limitation of Wi-Fi for presentations: The narrowness of its bandwidth (real-world speeds of about 4.5 megabits per second) precludes video and audio transmissions. We even noticed a heartbeat's lag between the appearance of still images on our notebook and on the projector screen.

To gauge how easy it was to switch between users working with different notebooks, we tried using a second Wi-Fi?enabled Compaq notebook with each projector. With all but the Sharp, though, we had difficulty in making a smooth switch. And you can't wield the Sharp remote as a mouse when you connect wirelessly.

Overall, we found that the convenience of these first Wi-Fi?enabled projectors wasn't worth the setup hassles, content limitations, and added expense. The good news: All four come with cables for more-conventional operation.