Cheap and easy -- wireless
Published: 18 Jun 2001 16:08 BST
I'm expecting the next three or four months to be a time of the avalanche of low-cost, accessible WiFi and Bluetooth devices, suitable for home, office, or even beach use. In short, I expect wireless to become both cheap, and easy to use.
The announcement by two PC makers -- Sony and Fujitsu -- of working Bluetooth PC notebooks is a breakthrough in product terms. But what is needed to make the general consumer wake up and smell the toast? -- an awareness breakthrough seems as far away as ever.
This isn't just Bluetooth, which is designed to get rid of messy earphone cables. It also applies to un-wiring of offices. And I think a key to getting an awareness breakthrough will be smuggling wireless devices into other ones.
For example, you can't easily hold an umbrella and dial a phone number, because the two devices are things that require the full attention of a complete five-digit extremity to operate. A complete hand, in fact. So why not produce phones which are actually umbrellas? -- OK, it's a crazy notion, but only because our national hobby in the UK is leaving umbrellas on trains.
The work that I'm interested in, is stuff being done by people like Fujitsu-Siemens with the car makers, putting Bluetooth into vehicles. Why not? -- it isn't going to run out of battery power in a car. You could build a neat little local networking hub, integrating pocket computer, phone, audio and display -- without any need to plug cables in, or to trip over them when you get out in a hurry.
But all this creative thinking only becomes useful when people start to realise how good wireless life is -- and until they sample it, they'll never really have any idea. It's like trying to get people to watch a new cult TV show or radio program (indeed, I can well remember the frustration my friends went through in the late 70s, trying to get me to listen to the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, faced with my conviction that they didn't understand the sort of stuff I would enjoy).
My favourite example is the Elsa ISDN wireless access point. Lots of people have ISDN, and live too far from city centres to get cable modems or ADSL. The work involved in connecting several machines to the same ISDN line is daunting. Elsa, of course, has had a wireless ISDN hub for two years; it includes an ISDN router and CAPI server; and it now has a variant of that available running at 11 megabits, for four hundred pounds. But they sell hardly any, because nobody -- not even the typical professional -- knows it exists.
Watch for Elsa to make some exciting moves in this arena. Over the next three months, new products will emerge, aimed at the home user, not the office professional. Prices will drop; usability will improve.
For example: look at its AirLancer USB-11 wireless adaptor. And yes, I know what you're thinking: USB isn't wireless, is it? But stop, and look!
If you have a wireless dream, you may well discover that it's actually quite hard to get your desktop machine on the air. Most wireless adapters are PCMCIA standard, aimed at notebooks.
So first, you have to open your desktop processor box up! -- not something even a professional does willingly with something that is stable, working, and tucked away under a desk with power, audio and video cables neatly hidden out of sight.
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