Bluetooth brouhaha sets my teeth on edge
Jason Brooks
individual.com
The tech media loves to obsess about Bluetooth,
which is why when Microsoft announced this week
that Windows XP will not ship with native support
for Bluetooth, we end up with something like this:
Bluetooth has emerged from its teething period full
of cavities, so Microsoft has pulled it from Windows
XP.
(I figure why not get the requisite puns out of the
way early.)
One of the problems here is that in order for
Microsoft to have pulled native Bluetooth support
from Windows XP, that feature must have been at
some point part of XP, which it has not been, at
least not in Beta 1 or Beta 2 of the new OS.
While Microsoft may be the king of feature creep,
it's important to remember how many technologies
that work with Windows have developed quite
comfortably without being part of the OS.
Last year's Windows ME was the first version of
Windows with native support for creating and
decompressing ZIP files, but the ZIP format had
gotten along pretty well, even in its
pre-Windows-supported days.
And since when has Microsoft been known for
championing bleeding-edge technologies? USB,
Firewire, the Internet, digital media, 802.11--the list
is long, and Microsoft's pattern of conservative,
imitative technology adoption is clear.
Surprise!
As a matter of fact, Windows XP does work with
Bluetooth--I have it working now, with Windows
XP Beta 2 and the Windows 2000 version of the
drivers and software suite from Digianswer A/S.
Digianswer's Bluetooth Cards are marketed
through OEMs Motorola, Toshiba, IBM, Dell and
NEC, and they've been available since last
September.
Sure, it would be helpful if Windows XP supported
Bluetooth out of the box--it would also be helpful if
I didn't have to download and install drivers from
SanDisk for my CompactFlash card reader or have
to download Adobe Acrobat every time I reinstall
the OS on a Windows machine.
Bluetooth is a young technology -- and a
technology in flux. Anyone who tells you to expect
better living through Bluetooth sometime mid-next
week is selling you a bill of goods.
That said, Bluetooth is for real, and in the short
term you can expect to find it performing
PDA-to-desktop synchronization and
computer-to-cell-phone connectivity duties--the
sort of basic cable replacement tasks for which the
technology was designed.
Help us out! Come up with your own
Bluetooth-punning headlines and sling them at
jason_brooks@ziffdavis.com. |
