It's time Bluetooth was more than a joke

Is Bluetooth ready for the mass market? Anecdotal evidence would suggest not.

Earlier this month, one of the big printer manufacturers (okay, it was HP) hosted an event in Singapore for UK journalists. HP generously gave them each a Bluetooth printer and adaptor card to test.

As of this writing, the technical editor of vnunet.com's sister title Computing has completely failed to get the printer and the card to communicate with each other at all. So has the technical editor of another major IT newspaper.

This raises some questions about the prevailing standards in wireless technology.

There are distinct advantages to Bluetooth. Where a workstation once consisted of screen, keyboard, mouse, system box and a connection to the network, the average executive desktop can now look like a clearance sale at Dixons.

There's the charger for the mobile phone, the adaptor for the PDA, the personal colour printer, the second monitor for monitoring your website or your systems, and on and on.

Bluetooth is potentially a boon. By ridding your desk of cables, you not only save on space, but there is also some benefit to the planet's supply of metals.

The peripherals vendors are trying to help by putting Bluetooth in just about anything. The theory goes that while Bluetooth is getting everywhere, the standards will evolve to deal with the communications problems.

Hopefully they will deal with some security issues as well. This was highlighted by another colleague who installed a Bluetooth printer only to find that it immediately started printing a document fired from a computer in the next department.

But Bluetooth has to be more than a cause for amusement (although keep sending in the funny stories!) if it is to take its place in the move to more flexible, wireless configurations and do away with the creeping plague of cables.

802.11 will take its place as the serious wireless technology of choice while Bluetooth should fulfil its own role as the departmental cable-replacement wireless network of choice.

But if some serious work isn't done on making it a more workable standard and done soon, it won't even do that.

Now, I'm just going to see if I can get that infrared connection on my laptop to work ...