HP Introduces A Bluetooth Printer

man_ls writes: "I found this on C|Net, it's an HP Printer that also supports Bluetooth. You can read about it here. Not that the Bluetooth will do anything except interfere with 802.11 wireless networks, but it's an interesting feature to have." Actually, Bluetooth shouldn't interfere with 802.11 except in confusing product marketing, right? Nice to see that at least one printer will actually hit the market with a short-range radio interface instead of wire (inconvenient) or IR (poor interoperability).

Comments

poor interoperability of IR?

[mj6798]

I don't see why you think that IR has poor interoperability. In my experience, IrDA works pretty well, allowing data objects to be exchanged between different devices reasonably well.

IR seems like a much better choice than Bluetooth in many applications because it is intrinsically more secure and doesn't suffer from RF interference. The latest IrDA standards are also a lot faster than Bluetooth. Visibility and propagation restrictions for IR are usually not all that serious in an office environment.

There are a few niche applications where Bluetooth may be better, but I'd like to see IrDA used much more widely. Too bad that IrDA has lost its buzz.

People are missing the point

[brunes69]

Alot of people are wondering what the point of this, talking about carrying the printer around, etc. The point of IR and / or Bluetooth on a printer, is now anyone can walk into the office with his laptop/pda/cell/whatever, and print instantly. No need to dock it, hook up a cable, install drivers (cause they'd already be instealled), etc. This is a godsend for people who do most of their work on the road. This is the reason printers have been IR compatable for some time.

Re:People are missing the point

[mini me]

I agree, if all I/O devices had thier own address you could have a keyboard and monitor and control a machine half way around the world without you even having a computer locally! If monitors acted like x-clients for example, you could have your web browser up on screen, and at the same time have a video feed coming in and displayed on your TV all from the same computer. You could also run another application on a different monitor much like having dual screens now, but you wouldn't even need an extra video card and you could display to as many screens as you'd like! In the thin-client world you wouldn't even need a local machine either, all keyboards and screens would just connect to the network and the "mainframe" would do the rest (sounds alot like dumb terminals again, doesn't it?).

I think this would be a great new way of interfacing components if the security concerns could be worked out. Since the new business computing model seems to be heading back to dumb terminals maybe this is the ideal way to implement it? Bandwidth/latency issues aside you wouldn't even need to have the computers in the same building, just need a network connection.

With IPv6 on it's way (or so we hope) this could be an ideal way of computing. If security issues could be solved, are there any other pitfalls I'm missing? I think this would be a great system for interfacing componets!

this is a press release

[pangu]

From the article, "While we haven't had a chance to test the DeskJet 995C, ..."

Ummm, this may as well be an HP press release.

802.11 & the purpose of bluetooth

[Matt_Bennett]

Bluetooth does interfere with 802.11- they are both using the same 2.4 GHz band (as a bunch of other things too) but they do interfere- they don't completely knock each other out, but they will degrade each other's range and total throughput. I wish I had a good reference for it- my information comes from a talk I heard from a guy on the Bluetooth committee. That 2.4 GHz band is a free-for-all. Telephones, Bluetooth, 802.11, wireless cameras, and whatever the next big thing is. You only have so much bandwidth, and you have to share.

As a cable to something like a printer- yep, that's the whole idea behind bluetooth- as a way to eliminate wires, and I'm sure we'll be seeing more of it. Eliminating wires is just the beginning- the real amazing stuff will come when things are truly interconnected and it's cheap- cheap really is the selling point behind bluetooth. The manufacturers I've talked to have a goal of about a $5.00 cost for the bluetooth solution. When we get there (802.11 is a more complex solution that is aimed for the higher end, and that is getting pretty cheap- the cards are way under $100, which means that the chipsets are probably under $20). Aside from the irritating marketing potential, having everthing interconnected is the way things are going- where you don't have to worry about synchronizing your Palm Pilot and your phone with your computer, they do it automatically when you're nearby.

Bluetooth has the potential to really change the way computers work with everything- we just have to see if it will really happen. It's not the only thing that we need- and it won't happen tomorrow.

Re:why

[Lars T.]

Hell, what's wrong with pen and paper? ;-)

Re:this is why

[stripes]

No, because ethernet ports are generally built into the mainboard, so would require a costly replacement of the hardware and firmware to be able to support Bluetooth, 802.11 or whatever.

I think the point is if you have a postscript printer on your IP network, and you hook up an 802.11 access point t your IP network, then your printer magically becomes an 802.11 printer as well (unless you fire wall off the 802.11 part, which is frequently a good idea, but not as frequently done).

The upside? One 802.11 access point gets all your printers. The downside? The longer range of 802.11 lets people outside your office waste your paper. Plus IP stacks on many printers are insanely fragile, so someone could break the printer pretty simply.

intereferance?

[Alien54]

I have seen a situation where a 900 mhz wireless phone and a wireless keyboard/mouse combo had some interferance problems, mostly in the headphone audio.

So the obvious question is if there are other similar problems possible/probable with all these other wireless devices.

Of course, technically, it is possible, but I am wondering about the practical worries, be it from the office next door or whatever, given the coming explosion in the range of wireless devices.

OT, Logitech Cordless Keyboard/mouse + 802.11

[geomcbay]

This is starting to get somewhat offtopic, but
I've had bad experiences trying to mix a Logitech Cordless Keyboard/Mouse (Freedom Pro? I believe was the moniker) with 802.11 Wireless LAN cards (D-Link PCI/PCMCIA cards).

I tried to mix the two when creating a 'set-top box' type computer system for TV use -- mostly to play MAME games and such on the big screen, but I added an 802.11 card and cordless key/mouse for some comfy web surfing.

At any rate, I had tons of connection problems with from the 802.11 in this machine to the 802.11 access point even though they were well within 802.11 range with very little obstruction..On a hunch I pulled out the cordless keyboard/mouse system and shelved it and the connection problems went away. I wish these devices were a bit smarter about collisions and finding some way to avoid them.

Re:OT, Logitech Cordless Keyboard/mouse + 802.11

[tzanger]

I've had bad experiences trying to mix a Logitech Cordless Keyboard/Mouse (Freedom Pro? I believe was the moniker) with 802.11 Wireless LAN cards (D-Link PCI/PCMCIA cards).

That's interesting; we use the same Logitech cordless keyboard/mouse (it comes as a pair) but with Lucent (ORiNOCO, god I hate that name) wavelan cards. The cards are on separate floors of an office building (wood frame), about 150' apart I'd say. The "access point" is the company firewall which is in an encassed metal rack. We have absolutely no problems at all.

I'd be curious to try out other vendor's cards to see if there really is a difference between these expensive Lucent cards and the cheaper DLink and other cards or if I'm just lucky.

Re:why

[Ed Avis]

Yeah, a network interface on a printer is often a cause of trouble. It's bad enough if it has an open lpr port where anyone can print to it - you end up having to firewall the printer to stop unauthorized printing. It's worse if there is some fancy-schmancy 'control panel' available with a web browser; again, either there's no security or at best it involves a plaintext password.

And the sophisticated queuing software installed on many printers tends to crash, with no way to fix the problem (since you don't have the source).

But none of this is necessary. It would be much easier just to have a parallel port connected to a print server (which you will probably need anyway) and do any queuing or other fun stuff on the print server, with software you can fix, on an operating system you're familiar with. Removing an extra layer of queuing (the printer's own queue) would also lessen the black-hole-ness of submitting a print job and make it easier to cancel or promote jobs (can be done on the print server). Cutting out the unncessarily bloated firmware would probably make the printer a bit cheaper also.

The only intelligence that needs to be on the printer is a PostScript rasterizer, and even that isn't necessary if you can get a 600dpi bitmap page to the printer fast enough. It's a shame that SCSI-based printing never really took off. Although parport is pretty fast these days too.

Re:this is why

[stripes]

Easy solution to the security problem: VPN tunnel through the firewall. Both secure and useful.

I don't have an ethernet printer at home, but I do use SSH tunnels there (to get my mail, and run VNC, and/or X).

The last place I worked had an open 802.11 network, but it was treated as "outside the firewall" by everything at work. They also have another open 802.11 network in another building that is inside the firewall, which is a bad idea.