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Microsoft Shuts Windows On Bluetooth Support
kilrogg points to "a story from eetimes.com
on Microsoft's refusal to include Bluetooth support in their next versions of Windows. They seem to think (as most of us) that 802.11b has a better chance of succeeding." The article cites the recent flopped Bluetooth demo at CeBIT. I'm pretty neutral on Bluetooth, but when's the last time a new technology's first big public demo was perfect?
I think people might be mistaken when they make the comparison between bluetooth and 802.11 . Yes they are both wireless communcation standards. But bluetooth seems to engineered to be leaner, requiring way less power and cheaper to integrate. 802.11 is fast (by comparison) but probably wont run on AAA bats anytime soon. Its like ethernet vs serial. Sure, you want ethernet everywhere but sometimes that's just not practical.
Does this mean that XP won't ship with a DVD player?
>What major annual releases? XP isn't out until next year is it?
XP will be on shelves in time for Christmas.
>And didn't Terminal Server - a fairly big deal - appear in SP6.
Not even close. Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition is a separate NT product from Server and Adv. Server. There is a separate SP6 for it. In Windows 2000, Terminal Services is a builtin service for all versions of Server.
For example, the guy doing the presentation was talking about a scenario where someone with a BT enabled device could walk into a room, and his device would know about the other devices available to be used as BT peers. That sounds great, except that you can only have so many devices in a room before things fall down and go boom... thus, BT would not be suitable for applications that might need to scale.
Problems like that would present nasty obstacles for widespread commercial adoption. If every TV and VCR and cel phone is going to have one of these things in 'em (the BT "grand vision of the future"), I can tell you that in MY 10 meter radius, my home, I'd have easily enough devices to overload the levels that are currently being discussed.
Security needs to be definitively addressed too. The concept of someone camping on my doorstep and using my printer doesn't much appeal to me... ;)
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
Within the last week though, finding out that A> the devices don't interoperate properly and B> one of the major players in the game doesn't wanna play any more has made me think otherwise... and it makes me wonder about what's going to happen with all that sticky 'intellectual property' crap the presenter was talking about being all tangled and impossible to discern whose was which. Fuss over that could scuttle things in a heartbeat.
Unless some major positive things happen for BT real soon, I'll be suprised if anything more than a bare few handfuls of peripherals will be made available commercially.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
Actually the only thing about Linux that threatens anybody is the price.
In the latest round of year 2000 marketshare reports, both Linux and Windows NT showed market growth. Linux is cutting into commercial Unix market, which historically has been more stable and secure than their Linux counterparts.
Why would I choose Linux if I could instead choose Solaris or HPUX? The only answer I can conceive of is cost.
Does Linux have more applications available?
My 4 years of professional experience with Unix revolved around a product called Arc/Info. It's a GIS package from ESRI. At the time it was $18,000 and only ran on Unix workstations.
Today Arc/Info is also available for NT/Win2k. It is still available for Tru64 Unix, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, etc.
Yet there is no mention of a Linux port.
That wasn't true at the last place I worked. The base stations were all Ciscos (formerly Aeronet or something like that). Almost all of the laptops on it were wintel boxes (a fair number of them running some sort of Unix though). The only Mac that I knew of on them was my own personal box (which I got to play with OSX on).
I'm going to guess that given the vast wintel market share that most laptops are wintels, and even if only 20% of them have airports and 100% of the Macs do, there are still more wintel 802.11 boxes then Macs.
We still probably have Apple to thank for subsidizing, or at least taking no profit on the 802.11, and making the antenna built in (my PowerBook gets much better range then my Viao, and I never er worry about the antenna getting snapped off!).
On the other hand, if you are a printer maker you not only need to add bluetooth hardware, you also have to make your printer conform to the profile (or do so in one mode), which reduces your ability to make your product "different and better".
That's mostly better for the consumer, but worse for the printer makers.
GUIs have never sold themselves.
The Xerox Star in 1981 flopped. The Apple Lisa in 1983 flopped. The Apple Macintosh in 1984 flopped. (more on that in a moment) GEM could have worked out, but Apple killed it, and MS would have worked to kill it later. The Amiga in 1985 flopped. Windows 1 and 2 in '85 and '87 (?) flopped. NeXTStep in '89 flopped. BeOS in '96 flopped.
The Mac achieved decent success, but honestly has been declining in significance (this coming from a long time Mac user) since the very early 90's. It's just about toast now. However, until compelling applications - i.e. DTP - and reasonable hardware - i.e. the Mac Plus - came along, the Mac was a failure.
Windows has succeeded largely because it is incrementally better than running plain jane DOS, but doesn't interfere with the ability to do so. No significant reinvestment in hardware or software was necessary, because compatability was prioritized higher than functionality. It seems to have worked. Certainly MS has wanted people to use NT since it's arrival, but it's taken the better part of a decade to get people there and it's not all done yet.
What sells computers is really a combination of Applications, Compatability/Standards/Mindshare, Performance and Price. All tempered by the perception of those attributes, which frequently override the realities.
(Oh, btw, pretty much everyone in the Lisa and Mac projects at Apple knew about PARC. Taking them there was a ploy to get managerial support; they were already familar with the details and had a good idea of what they wanted to do.)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
So what happens if Apple leads the way here, again? Let's assume that come Macworld in July, Apple unveils wireless keyboards and mice that are compliant with the (published) bluetooth standards? I can picture Steve Jobs, black turtleneck and all, "Now, every mac we ship after today will be bluetooth enabled, to take advantage of the coming devices."
Remember USB and FireWire? Microsoft is STILL catching up with those. Microsoft has had a chance to innovate several times but decided instead to follow along after the innovation happened. This is another time where maybe it's better that someone else innovate so that OPEN standards are created that Microsoft has to abide by. Otherwise, MS could implement their version, flex monopoly muscles, and make everyone else follow along.
My other computer is your Windows box
802.11 is a wireless replacement for ethernet. Bluetooth is a replacement for short-haul cable like serial cables, wireless phones, and such. They are not in direct competition, but complement each other. 802.11 is high speed, but expensive and power-hungry, while bluetooth is short range, low speed, cheap and power efficient (an important requirement for PDA:s, phone handsets and other gadgets with a limited battery life). You wouldn't use Bluetooth as a replacement for cable networks, and you won't want to use 802.11 as a replacement for serial or parallel cable.
I don't want either 802.11 or Bluetooth, I want both -- and use them for the different things they are meant for.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Bluetooth has never been in the MS best interest. It is in the interest of Sony, JVC, and other entertainment and home equipment vendors. They (for example look for the interviews with Sony's boss) will eat MS alive the moment they can and they hate it. They will have most of the profit margin. Microsoft will not earn from it. Even if it could they will not let it.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
That is the most profound, and appropriate, statement I've read on here today! People have to remember that different products have different aims. Look at all the promises made about IRDA a few years back and most of them can be applied to Bluetooth. IRDA is one technology that Bluetooth is likely to completely replace in a few years.
World Beach List, my latest project.
Would you settle for a laptop? I believe Sony and at least one or two other companies have announced models that include integrated Bluetooth capability. I'll lay odds we will see PC motherboards with Bluetooth within a year.
Obligatory plug: Information on Bluetooth under Linux and general Bluetooth information is available at the Bluetooth topsites list .
World Beach List, my latest project.
This is very similar to how the TCP/IP interface under Windows evolved with WinSock. In the early days, each TCP/IP utilties vendor had their own IP stack. If you bought a 3rd party application, you had to check which stacks it supported. When WinSock came out, that all changed. Apps could be written for only one interface. However, this did kill off the various IP stacks. Probably not a great loss, but it is of note.
Bluetooth will likely have a similar evolution. The value-add will be in the higher level apps rather than the core protocol stack.
Obligatory plug: Information on Bluetooth under Linux and general Bluetooth information is available at the Bluetooth topsites list .
World Beach List, my latest project.
Actually, base station class devices such as LAN access points have a range up to 100' or 200' (sorry, can't remember which right now). These devices require more power than a handheld would provide, but will be used to bring point of presence service to larger areas. I imagine the convention floor was using devices of this level. The potential for too many people in too short of range goes up quite a bit. Still, I imagine it was more trouble with the 1.0 to 1.1 spec conversion than range and population issues.
Obligatory plug: Information on Bluetooth under Linux and general Bluetooth information is available at the Bluetooth topsites list .
World Beach List, my latest project.
It's a little early in the life cycle to be declaring Bluetooth dead and buried. The hardware is only just now starting to show up. Software is under active development. Even though Microsoft is sitting on their back side, other companies are developing Windows support for Bluetooth. There is also work underway to support Bluetooth under Linux. I've already seen reports of success connecting Linux and Windows machines using Bluetooth for file transfers.
Microsoft is not making a mistake in holding off in shipping Bluetooth enabled versions of their OS. They are making a mistake in not commiting openly to providing Bluetooth support as a service pack after the product ships and Bluetooth standards settle down. This can probably be written off as another marketing blunder.
There is a big difference between Bluetooth and Betamax. Bluetooth is an open standard. Sony wanted to collect a royalty of use of Betamax. If you had drawn a comparison between Fireware (with Apple) and Betamax it would have been more appropriate.
More resources on what Bluetooth is (and is not) is available from a Bluetooth topsites list which contains a few dozen links to Bluetooth sites.
World Beach List, my latest project.
Microsoft isn't alone here. Several vendors are getting squirrely when it comes to Bluetooth support. 3Com had an actual products page for Bluetooth up until about a week ago. Now, the link just circles back to their home page. Intel took their Bluetooth info down somewhere before that.
I've been collecting links for Bluetooth under Linux for the last few weeks. Oddly, some of the information is going away as fast as new information is coming online. The good news, however, is that with Microsoft's latest move we will see Bluetooth for Linux support well before Bluetooth for Windows support at the kernel level. If Microsoft doesn't include support, it will be up to each individual vendor to come up with their own OS API implementation.
For people wanting to get more information on Bluetooth, there is a topsites list of links to information resources. Please, help to keep the Linux links high on the list. :)
World Beach List, my latest project.
So you're telling me the Skyline card in my laptop doesn't work on battery power? Come off it man. 802.11 needs little more processing power than wired networks because 12Mbps is a pretty low volume data stream. Besides the processor only has to buffer a maximum of one megabit because its always hopping frequencies.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
This doesn't sound right, there existed 10Mbps Ethernet and 16Mbps Token Ring before there existed any ~200 MHz processors. Maybe you are referring to {en,de}crypting a 12Mbps stream with a low power ASIC but even that doesn't seem like it would be as taxing as you postulate.
One, or probably both, of us do not understand this fully. Anyway, at least to me, 802.11 does sound like a good standard. I hope that it can be implemented in the kind of small, lightweight, equipment that Bluetooth was intended for. Maybe we will end up with a high-power and low-power 802.11 standard or something.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Ethernet != Internet.. that's just what we tend to use it for. And Bluetooth can be used the same way.
But the point is.. you hook printers to the network because its' FAST. You use bluetooth because it's tiny, low-power, and convenient.
Bluetooth is what IRDA should have been.
802.11 and Bluetooth are *totally different*.
It makes me sick to see all this 'bluetooth networking'.
802.11 is for wireless lan.
Bluetooth is for simple data communications between portable devices.
SHEESH.
Bluetooth is good because it can be implemented in 1 or 2 chips, with the antennae and transmitter in the chips..... so it is *cheap* to wirelessly enable a device. That was the whole point of bluetooth.. so all these pda developers and shit could easily and cheaply make stuff communiacate.
It's against their policy to add new featurs in an service pack. . .
Microsoft probably do not want Bluetooth to sync devices. That does not fit their .net strategy. Instead, they want you to sync your data through some service, so that all information passes through their portals. For example, if you want to sync your Palm with you PC, they rather want you to connect to palm.net (or something like it) and then download your information to your pc from there, rather than letting the palm sync with the pc directly.
"I don't think the maturity of Bluetooth technology is good enough to ship the bits when Windows XP is released," said Carl Stork, general manager of Microsoft's Windows division, speaking in an interview at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) here. "We wouldn't want to ship something that doesn't work, and Bluetooth doesn't yet meet a certain quality level." Yeah right, that WAS funny!!!! HAHAHA
In a way this is a good sign for Apple: they are leading again, just like the elder days of look&feel... (which might come again with XP vs. OS X)
-- Colin
Could be. I've always thought that ethernet was rather inefficient, but that the lack of rigidity more than made up for it. Ironically of course, ethernet was based on work done with the AlohaNet radio networking project.
Actually, Ethernet is pretty efficent if there aren't many devices who want to talk -- the extreme case being two devices talking over a private collision domain full duplex. In that case there isn't any need to even wait before you talk; except for the ethernet headers it's almost pure gravy. Ethernet is designed to use an unloaded medium efficiently. Other technologies like FDDI (which I don't have much experience with) and token ring are designed to degrade more linearly when large numbers of devices want to talk, at the expense of considerable overhead when few do.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
From the article:
Because 802.11 uses the Internet Protocol (IP) for communications, it can rely on IP systems services in the operating system. Bluetooth, however, does not use IP, and thus must rely on application-level support for communications.
Isn't this backwards? That is to say IP over 802.11 uses 802.11 for link level and physical connectivity, and 802.11 looks at the IP packet headers as just another kind of meanignless payload? You should be able to put any kind of protocol built to be layered this way on top of 802.11, shouldn't you? In fact I have an 802.11 LAN cards in my SOHO and it appears that I can bind any protocols I want to them.
If what I learned way back in school about this stuff is correct, the issue is whether 802.11 is a good way to share the wireless medium -- in this case a piece of radio spectrum.
Somebody who understands 802.11 is welcome to correct me, but I've been told that 802.11 is basically Ethernet over radio. It seems to me that if this is true, I'd expect 802.11 to be a poor thing for ubiquitous interdevice networking. You could gin up small demonstrations that'd work great, but they just wouldn't scale. The reason why is Ethernet's Listen Before Talk method of sharing the medium. Managing wire LANs that work this was is a bit easier, because collision domains have limited numbers of devices, have limited extent, and can be easily separated. Without this ability, as the packet rate grows larger devices spend more time waiting to talk (and this is nondeterministic, to boot). As the LAN gets physically larger, the number of unavoidable collisions also increases.
Back in the late 80s when thinwire Ethernet was still common and large 10BaseT hubs were a common backbone solution (and when I was more up to date;-) a lot of people had doubts about the scalability of Ethernet over the next decade. The advent of cheap 100BaseTX and affordability of large switches with massive backplane bandwidth solved this problem for most people by keeping collision domains small and capacious.
However, if you imagine a large convention center full of bluetooth cell phones, computers, pdas, and miscellaneous peripherals, all sharing a common transmission medium, anything that worked remotely like Ethernet is going to fail: too many devices waiting to talk -- no guarantee of fair queueing -- no defined physical LAN extent.
Even leaving aside issues of cost, complexity, and power consumption, 802.11 would be a poor choice. It might work well in a SOHO or small LAN environment where there wasn't much interference from nearby wireless LANs.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The emphasis is on MICROSOFT. I can go to a store TODAY and buy a Toshiba bluetooth PCMCIA card and plug it into my laptop and install the drivers for it and it will work fine with my Nokia 6210 phone with bluetooth (it's an add-on). I couldn't care less if Microsoft supports it or not. Just like Microsoft doesn't have to support my Sony monitor - as long as Sony has drivers for it that works with Windows.
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
See subject for the question.
... I'm just curious as to what problem BlueTooth is trying to solve.
Please don't start a flamewar
Shouldn't MS have to include bluetooth support?
By not including it, aren't they really just using their monopolistic practices to advance a technology of their choice? If bluetooth is an innovative technology, then isn't this just more proof of the same argument about the MS monopoly stifiling progress?
Lobby congress now! FOrce MS to include Bluetooth support!
There are a lot of comments that are pointing out the semantic differences between 802.11b and Bluetooth. Ethernet vs Serial, or Different Uses, or Bluetooth Networking makes me sick.
My question, why split hairs? The point of both is to get two or more devices to talk by radio. The point of both is to be able to exchange data in that conversation. The point of both is to make devices interoperable.
The wifi or 802.11b approach is the extension of the network: give it an address and a standard suite of protocols, and the software support will explode. Why can't my cellphone have an IPv6 address? Why can't my mouse have an IPv6 address? Why can't my digicam or webcam or weather station or Palm XII or stereo have IPv6 addresses on my wireless home network?
Make the distinction of 'heavy' nodes and 'light' nodes go away. Sure, current 802.11b is power-hungry, but I expect there's ways of making "short haul" 802.11b work in the two meter desktop range where Bluetooth is supposed to win.
Maybe I'm missing the point. Educate me. Why shouldn't teeny handheld devices speak the same protocols that the desktop and servers speak? Why should we make yet another 'dumb device' protocol/transport like RS232, USB and Firewire? The 'dumb devices' seem to be evaporating.
[
One of the problems with supporting Bluetooth under Windows, for MS or anyone else, is that it doesn't fit neatly into MS's existing software architectures, whereas 802.11 'looks' so much like ethernet that it's a no-brainer to adopt.
Bluetooth has several protocol layers involved, and if these layers aren't standardized then you'll never get two Bluetooth applications to work on the same PC because they'll each want to install their own protocol stack. Think what would happen if every ethernet vendor and/or network application developer wrote their own TCP/IP stack....that's where Bluetooth is headed if MS snubs them.
Microsoft has never been a supporter of Bluetooth to start with. I was involved in Bluetooth development for a short period over two years ago, when the BT SIG was trying to complete development of the 1.0 spec's. MS was completely absent from the meetings and could not be convinced to attend. One possible reason for this was because the SIG had a rule that all intellectual property put into the standards became freely licensed to all SIG members. If I remember correctly they had actually planned to remove this rule after the 1.0 specs were finished to entice MS into joining the SIG to work on V1.1 - but then I moved off BT work so I don't know what happened.
Another possible reason is that Bluetooth is just not a PC-centric technology, and as much as some of the SIG members tried it's not a great LAN technology. From a user's point of view it might seem great to have all these devices talking to each other, but MS at the time only wanted to talk about PC issues and the investment required just so someone could hotsync without a cable probably didn't seem worth it. I have no idea where the WinCE group was - I think this was during the period when they were taking a bit of a market pounding (ie their first two releases)...I don't remember seeing them involved at all.
Disclaimer : my involvement in Bluetooth work was short and now seems long ago, so my observations may be a bit fuzzy.
Bluetooth and 802.11b have two very different applications. The goal of Bluetooth is to connect all kinds of different mobile equipment with some speed and very high reliability. 802.11b is made for speed, and I can't see a them getting 802.11b on chip, but getting bluetooth on a chip has been the goal all along.
I think this is only microsoft being angry for not being invited along in the first place.
However, Microsoft has a policy against adding new features in so-called service packs, intended as interim fixes between major annual releases of the operating system.
What major annual releases? XP isn't out until next year is it? And didn't Terminal Server - a fairly big deal - appear in SP6. Journos shouldn't believe everything the PR department says.
Slashdot had a story on this only 1 week ago. Biggest problem at this time seems to be that a BlueTooth 'standard' has yet to be implemented (there is even talk of creating a new standard that would merge the 'standards' that are now set by the different manufacturers).
Without a single standard that everybody is willing to adhere to, the sad truth is that BlueTooth may have the same destiny as WAP. Gartner Group and others proclaimed WAP to be The-Future (tm) and the Solution-to-all-your-Problems (tm). When WAP showed teething problems, it was immediately dumped by those same people. This may also happen to BlueTooth, if industry watchers will again show to be unwilling to value the technologie to its merits, and not by just trying to find the 10 reasons why BlueTooth doesn't solve the world's problems.
As long as Microsoft (and any other company) is faced with these uncertainties (BlueTooth standards still under development + public acceptance and succes far from sure) then it's only logical that they are not prepared to pour money in this.
I have a photographic memory for numbers. I know almost a hundred of them.
I have a 802.11b residential transmitter in my home and it works wonders. Fast speeds (11 Mbps), works with virtually every OS including Mac and Linux, and 128-bit encryption strength. The technology's not foolproof, but for what I do it works.
Then again, though, the whole draw to Bluetooth was using it in areas where close range contact was not only possible but essential. Like in front of a vending machine. I don't want the Pepsi machine down on the other side of the mall knowing that I'm buying from a Coke machine here. It's bad enough that I have to give up my privacy for one company (one of the cost "benefits" of Bluetooth) but two?
802.11b also has other problems. Most 802.11b client antenae are huge (the one on my Dell laptop bulges a good inch out the side, presumably to cut down on radio interference). Bluetooth, from my knowledge, can actually be imbedded pretty well in a phone. That might become a factor, considering the issues involved with 802.11b antenae ranges.
Who knows. Redmond, don't be a dick and support both anyway.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
So IBM, who's been greatly supporting Linux etc., brings out a new tech - and M$ thanks them by not supporting it? This smells very fishy to me, looks more like M$ is trying to punish IBM. Guess it's yet another maneuver by them to hurt competitors, and it should be brought to the attention of whoever's working the antitrust case against M$.
I've got several computers at home, each one with tons of cables I'd love to get rid of - Bluetooth would be just the thing. IEEE 802 something for the networking part, Bluetooth to interconnect the devices, adios serial, parallel, scsi, keyboard etc. cables. There are still some technical problems? They'll be worked out, no doubt. I certainly trust Big Blue more to get this done than M$. I'd love to get to use this tech. Good thing I won't have to wait for M$...
I've seen some comments as how M$ wouldn't want to bring out sth that wasn't (yet) working - BS. They've got tons of resources, and if they only just wanted to, I bet they could have something pretty nice up & running quite soon. I've seen quite some incompetence in IT departments, but I cannot imagine M$ not to have at least some cool geeks around.
Although knowing M$, they'll charge a $100 "upgrade" fee for this capability.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
...and hold my bitching at Microsoft regarding Bluetooth, until there's atleast an x86 motherboard out there with a Bluetooth transceiver built into it!
"And like that
So essentially, without support from Microsoft or the *nix/BSD community, Bluetooth will go the way of Betamax. Of course, IBM (Bluetooth's biggest promoter, from what I've seen) will still try to hold on, but then again, they did so with PC-DOS, OS/2, and the Aptiva. And look where those three are now.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Hmmm, isn't this like the one technology demonstration, given by our friend "Bill", regarding USB support for Win98?
Can anyone say "blue screen of death"?
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
I'm a softare/hardware engineer in the RF (wireless) engineering business. Primarily, I work with embedded products, so I can tell you that I'd be willing to use both 802.11 and Bluetooth. Whichever one wins out on any individual product is entirely dependent on the requirements of the product.
Power, size and price are always the driving factors when it comes to embedded products, mainly because the products are often battery operated. RF transmit power is a major concern when it comes to power consumption, but not the only concern. Processing power (and thus, what you can handle in terms of network protocols and bandwidth) is the other major concern.
Bluetooth would be great for embedded products that don't require more than 10 meters of operating distance. Also, you don't require as much processing power for Bluetooth as the transmission speeds are much lower.
802.11, on the other hand, has higher transmission speeds AND longer distance specifications. I've used 802.11 transceivers and they pretty much require you to have access to the good old 60 Hz line power we all know and love. It is also very hard to process a 12 Mbps datastream on a microcontroller that runs at any speed less than ~200 MHz (do the math). Even a custom IC or ASIC optimized for I/O processing would consume a fair amount of power processing such a datastream. Don't expect to see 802.11b on a handheld device unless it has access to line-power a significant amount of time or is a bastardized version of 802.11.
The primary factor for Bluetooth's slow industry acceptance is the price. While it doesn't operate at 12 Mbps, it is significantly fast and, with its convoluted master-slave networking protocol, requires either a ton of engineering time or expensive "blackbox" transceivers. We are ready to adopt it as soon as a customer is willing to pay the price; so far, they've liked our custom solutions instead.That name is WiFi. The idea being that in addition to supporting 802.11b all WiFi products should interoperate. It is a bit like the rechristening of Firewire as iLink after it turned out that many Video cameras with alledged Firewire did not work with most firewire PC boards.
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People will be able to use bluetooth devices with Windows regardless of the level of Microsoft support. What Microsoft has declined to do however is to positively endorse Bluetooth and encourage people to buy Bluetooth devices. That is important because it will make it harder for Bluetooth to gain mind share and hence critical mass.
Regardless of how many slashdotters bleat that the two don't compete, the fact is they do. There is absolutely nothing Bluetooth can do that WiFi/802.11b cannot. Bluetooth's advantages of a marginal cost reduction and lower power have yet to be demonstrated.
The biggest problem with Bluetooth is that it isn't ready for prime time yet. The warring camps have not come together on a common interoperable standard. They are currenlty planning to launch two incompatible variants.
The next biggest problem is that nobody can make out a coherent case for the technology. There is absolutely no reason for my laptop to talk to my cellphone (apart from downloding the address book which already works via Ird). If my laptop wants to talk to the Internet I will get it a GPRS modem. As the glut of cellular bandwidth hits the US as it hit Europe the same type of calling plans will be available - allowing pooling of subscriptions across several phones.
Same goes for my PDA which won't be talking to my cellphone because it will be my cellphone. I would much prefer a slim calculator shaped form factor for the single handheld device I carry with me. I almost always use the headset in any case.
Having redundant technologies killed off is a good thing. There is nothing worse than having a Betamax/VHS type standoff causing companies to hedge their bets, wait to deploy etc. What Microsoft has done is a good thing, they have in effect declared that they consider one technology the winner. Rather than waiting for Bluetooth to mature to the point of actually working the market is likely to focus on using 802.11b to solve their problems.
I don't want Bluetooth to continue to die a lingering death. It is time for someone to announce that they have failed, have no reasonable prospect of success and that the situation is unlikely to change in the future. Microsoft has done this, we should hope that more companies follow their lead.
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For someone to just base this statement with no supportive information is deadbeat. Just think of the typical comp user who doesn't understand upper level technology, and how to configure things. This notion that people are willing to accept a substandard product are misconceived. Think about the people who are moving off 56k connections to DSL, Cable, etc., they've moved because obviously their concerned with speed, so for these industry people to say, people will pay x amount of dollars when they know they're buying a substandard product... Who do they think theyy're kidding? Once people read about little quirks like this, they'll be likely to wait before diving into bluetooth, and if the problem isn't addressed fast, bluetooth will die entirely.
My two cents without going into the other issues in the article.
bluetooth free
360 degrees of Karma
If it supports Blue Tooth in its current incernation, they will have to add a lot of things, because it's not complete yet, and you'll be angry about them for embracing & extending the technology.
If they wait for Blue Tooth to become stable, you'll be angry about them for using monopoly power to strungle technology.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Who says Microsoft has to include support for every device on the market? Why are they required to include a driver for some hardware they do not necessarily want to? Do they not have the right for themselves to determine what hardware they want to support on their O/S?
If the Bluetooth companies want to write a driver for their devices, that's fine... but that doesn't mean MS MUST support the driver or the device.
On the same note, when was the last time Linus "supported" a hardware product? If I have a problem with a driver in the kernel, the first response back from the devel group is "then write a patch."
I'm sure if and when Bluetooth became popular that Microsoft will have a Compatibility Update for it or a service pack, then you restart your machine and the ability to use it at the kernel level would be there, but in NO WAY is Microsoft REQUIRED to include Bluetooth support in the first or any subsequent release of any of it's software.