NEWS: CES 2010: No More Cable Bondage

Ethernet cable (Cat5e and Cat6) both have information transfer rate limits. Cat 6 (200MHz) is double the frequency of Cat5e (100MHz), this is double the bandwidth (basically). When doing new installations I install Cat 6 in everything, it's truly has the capability to be faster and is more reliable. It's also a touch more expensive (usually about $40-$50 more when buying in 1000 foot rolls).

There. I doubled your speed right?

Wrong. The transmitter and the receiver still operate at less than 100 Mhz, well within the capabilities of Cat5e cable. Without changing the transmitter and the receiver, i haven't done anything. Cable companies use this ploy all the time.

They claim upgrades to the coaxial is going to increase speeds for digital TV and internet access. The truth is, if they're doing "upgrades" and not changing anything on the receiving end, they're technically doing "repairs". If you don't enhance the transmitter and receiver and still use coaxial cable, nothing is going to change. (Unless the coaxial is really beat to shit, then you'll notice a slight improvement).

Now on to the trouble of charging something at "double" the speed. Any time you charge DC items, be it a car battery, a cell phone battery or even rechargeable AA batteries, heat is created. Ever grab your cell phone right off the charger and it's warm?

That comes from the transfer of power. When you charge something you're basically cycling DC voltage through the battery from negative to positive. The battery is engineered to "store" the power and uses it as necessary. The charging circuit of the phone is engineered to only accept a certain amount of power flow. Any more and the phone will shut down (or if it doesn't you'll ruin the battery)

So this is a bottleneck issue. Your IPod, DS, Blackberry, I-phone are all engineered to charge at a certain rate. I-phones supposedly take about 2 hours to charge (i don't own one it is what i have read, so i may be wrong). if the phone gets too hot, it will shut off and stop charging, the safeguard, shut down so the heat doesn't do any permanent damage.

This can potentially happen when it's being charged in somewhat hot conditions with it's OEM charger. It's also a safeguard usually worked into any Smart Phone, for that matter any cell phone at all.

When charging at normal speeds, the phone heats up to an acceptable, engineered temperature, what that charging circuit sees as acceptable. Now "double" the speed of that charge, and you "double" the power being transferred in which you "double" the heat. If you truly "doubled" the speed of the charge, you would be operating outside of the engineered safe guards in the charging circuit, near impossible. The Phone would probably just shut down, even if you're not in the blazing sun of Vegas. The double rate would create too much heat for the safeguards.

This doesn't mean you can't speed up charge times. The charging circuit is engineered to accept a certain amount of power and the charger usually delivers slightly less than what is acceptable (another safeguard). You can get chargers that deliver more power and probably shave 10 to maybe 20 minutes off that charge time, but you are not going to double it. You would have to break a bunch of laws of electronics, like Ohm's law and Kirchoff's law to double it and you would probably just ruin the charging circuit if you did double it.

Not to mention the fact that batteries start getting ornery if you fuck with their charge cycle.