Thoughts from a reader about bluetooth, December 2003went to the Bluetooth show in SJ today... wasn't anywhere near as big as the wi-fi show and it was almost all hardware with a lot of companies showing board and chips... some protocol analyzers and a couple of spectrum analyzer manufacturers... there were several displays of motorcycle helmets with some bluetooth feature....had wondered how it compares with wi-fi and found out during a session by some guy who explained what it does... basically it's voice oriented so it operates primarily in a synchronous mode... it's also no where near as fast, topping out at 732.5 kps... this is why the phone cos are so big on it... there are 3 classes, 1 has a range up to 100 m, 2 up to 20m and 1 up to 10m... they said that class 3 is the most common because it's less vulnerable to interference since it operates on such a short range... it also lends itself to audio and one company had a CD player transmitting a signal to a receiver hooked up to some speakers which were playing some music... the rep said that bluetooth works best in a room with a standard height ceiling so the signal can bounce off it and not be blocked by someone walking between the source and the receiver... at the show he said he could do this because the ceiling was so high, although he didn't demo it... it's also much easier to set up, in fact there seems to be no setup... no SSID, IP protocols or anything else... the devices automatically look for each other and do their hand shake on their own... also security isn't much... within these limitations it does a lot of things but it seemed it's at a much earlier stage than wi-fi... at least from an app and marketing point... | 