A massive 70 percent of home users are using wireless technology to connect devices other than desktop PCs and laptops.
Half of all respondents to a poll on our sister site PC Advisor poll said that they use wireless to connect a lot of their gadgets and computing hardware, and a further 20 percent said they had done so in the past.
When asked 'Aside from a computer/laptop, do you connect different gadgets in your home together wirelessly?', 50 percent of readers responded with 'Yes, I wirelessly connect a lot of my technology'. The next most popular answer was 'Yes, I've tried it once or twice', with one fifth of the vote.
The least popular answer among readers was 'No, I don't have wireless', with only 2 percent of the vote. A similarly paltry 10 percent said 'No, I don't really know how to' - a perhaps unsurprising result from a poll of readers of a technical advice website. Four percent of respondents said they were not interested in wireless, and 14 percent responded with 'No, I don't have much wireless-enabled tech'.
The popularity of wireless is unsurprising -- it’s ubiquitous, and multifunctional. Around 19 million households in the UK have fixed internet access, and more than 90 percent of those have Wi-Fi-enabled broadband connections. Outside of the home, according to the Office For National Statistics the use of wireless hotspots almost doubled to 4.9 million users in the 12 months to August 2011. This has led to an explosion in the number of portable and household devices that utilise wireless connectivity.
Around 45 percent of internet users use a mobile device to connect to the internet, for instance. And with a connected PC and the right printer, it's now possible to print from anywhere in the house using a straightforward Wi-Fi connection, or anywhere in the world with a mobile device and wireless connectivity.
Once downloaded, you open the app, select a picture and hit send, and the app fires over the picture to the printer that's connected to your wireless network. With simplicity such as this, it’s easy to see why wireless gadgets are so popular.
See the full poll results here.
