When Boston's FleetCenter opened its doors Monday to the Democratic National Convention, it was equipped to provide convention delegates and event organizers with a level of wireless-networking capabilities that's unprecedented for major political conventions. The party's 4,500 delegates and alternates have wireless access to the Internet, while party members and event organizers will be able to wirelessly tap into a secure network used to run the show. "The Democrats decided this would be a wireless convention," says Charlie Palmer, Hewlett-Packard's senior public-sector account manager.
The Democratic National Committee and HP began discussions last spring regarding the use of wireless technology at the convention. The committee decided it wanted standard, off-the-shelf HP hardware and Cisco Systems networking technology combined with more customized software from Microsoft.
The result: HP supplied 231 TC-1100 tablet PCs and 150 model 4350 iPaq handheld computers to go with more than 30 Cisco wireless-access points installed throughout the FleetCenter. HP is lending tablet PCs to each delegation, as well as certain Democratic National Committee workers, to be used to communicate throughout the arena. Each tablet PC runs on a 1-GHz Intel Centrino processor with 512 Mbytes of memory, a 40-Gbyte hard drive, and 802.11b connectivity.
07-27-2004, 01:08 AM
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