you know the drill, sony had come up with betamax, it was supposed to be a better technology, but it was proprietary..VHS on the other hand was more of an open source, and betamax lost..
fast forward, IBM vs. apple.. you know the history
now, lets look at bluetooth, it is not the best technology..with 802.11g making more and more headway, is blue tooth destined to be relegated to smaller tasks like wireless keyboards, while 802.11 becomes the VHS.
although, i suspect that with ultrwide band just on teh horizon, 802.11 may end up being the APS camera of this decade..and UWB may do to 802.11 what digital cameras did to APS.
I remmeber I did a literature review on Bluetooth and 802.11b working together... Bluetooth is more device oriented, but uses the same frequency spectrum as the IEEE 802.11a/b/g so using the two (especially if you need one for your networking needs, and the other for your devices such as keyboards or mice) can be very problematic.
BT uses a lot less battery power and hence its a lot easier to integrate with little devices (e.g. cell phones, keyboards etc), plus security is not much of a concern cuz of the range.
802.11x has a lot more range so its better suited for setting up bigger networks but that gives way to security issues and in the coming years it would have to get more bandwidth intensive as encryption gets stronger. I think both have their strong points and I believe they will both live (unlike the metaphor of vhs and betamax).
is your question just about home use scenarios or also business applications?
For the home user, I think the value proposition to the consumer is quite different for both technologies...
bluetooth is slow speed (0.8 MBps) short range (10 metres), and more of a WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Network) technology suitable to a select group of devices meant for Personal Information Management, including PDAs', Laptops, Cell Phones, Pagers etc. whereas the 802.11b/a/g technologies are suitable for modest-range communications on a WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network), and can be extended to desktops and home entertainment systems.
Business applications is a different story... I just gave a talk/presentation on wireless applications for Supply Chain Management at the Toronto SCM Symposium last week. If interested, lemme know and I could comment a lil on that.
Umar I am thinking more from a business applications perspective, but not exclusively that.
I am even looking at medical applications and how slow blue tooth technology has been in that arena.
the big question is.. what is so imprtant, what has been driving this industry.. that is consumers and business needs to be connected but un-tethered. Short range blue tooth devices can only do so much and have to thus utilize your 802.11g type products for greater connectivity.
what else is an issue...power..if you look at power consumption for bluetooth vs its data transfer rate, it is not a good scenario.
I would think that bluetooth although relegated to personal devices will eventually phase out, as some of the bluetooth cpuncil members have jumped on 802.11 as well.
In future as ultra wide band becomes more public use with over a 1 gig data transfer rate and fractional power requirements of bluetooth and even 802.11, that will be the way to go.
blue tooth enabled phones and PDAs/ laptops are available now.
with emergence of 3G, this would make mobile office solutions possible.
at long distances WiFi is not comparable to mobile systems, as they have much more powerful transmitters n receivers.
integrating your other personal devices like webcam, digital camera, etc communicating with your other communiication devices is going to turn up interesting applications.
you have to remember, blue tooth is a server and client at the same time, unlike WiFi where driver issue still remains. BlueTooth is desgined with blind interoperatability as basis. all blue tooth devices can talk n communicate with each other. of course not all would work with each other .. like a blue tooth camera and a blue tooth hands free kit.. but u never know there may be applications for that too
so.. blue tooth and wifi (802.11x) are complementary products... in my opinion.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Fraudz: *
I am even looking at medical applications and how slow blue tooth technology has been in that arena.
the big question is.. what is so imprtant, what has been driving this industry.. that is consumers and business needs to be connected but un-tethered. Short range blue tooth devices can only do so much and have to thus utilize your 802.11g type products for greater connectivity.
what else is an issue...power..if you look at power consumption for bluetooth vs its data transfer rate, it is not a good scenario.
I would think that bluetooth although relegated to personal devices will eventually phase out, as some of the bluetooth cpuncil members have jumped on 802.11 as well.
In future as ultra wide band becomes more public use with over a 1 gig data transfer rate and fractional power requirements of bluetooth and even 802.11, that will be the way to go.
[/QUOTE]
I don't think BT is going to phase out. It was designed to help eliminate all the cords going to devices to your computer (e.g. mice, keyboards etc). Currently we have (or atleast I have) tons of cords running back and forth from the PC which just hinder space. Those devices would never need to be so far away as to require 802.11x and hence require more power. Maybe, comparatively, power may not totally translate to the bandwidth, it still doesn't mean much. The uses are totally different. U would never need a mouse at more than 10-15' away from the computer, and you would never need 2 laptops within 10 ft' to transfer date (you could always use irda if u did, which opens up another can of worms).
I'm pretty sure BT is here to stay as well as 802.11x. The both have their uses and their cons.