Ask Slashdot: Wireless Proximity Detection?

New submitter Cinnamon Whirl writes "As a chemist, I work in a both lab and office enviroments, and need access to data in both, without causing undue clutter in either. My company has recently purchased two Win7 tablets for trial usage with electronic lab notebooks, propietry software, SAP, email etc. These are also useful for sharing in meetings, etc. As part of this project, I have been wondering whether we can use these tablets to detect other devices by proximity. Examples could include finding the nearest printer or monitor or, perhaps trickier, could two roaming devices find each other? Although lab technology is rarely cutting edge, I can see a day when all our sensors and probes will broadcast data (wireless thermocouples are already available), and positioning information will become much more important. What technologies exist to do this? How accurate can the detection be?"

Comments

FUck you.

[Alex Belits]

And your whole company, and whatever Microsoft "partner" organized that crap.

If you actually needed a wireless client device with easy data entry, you would not use 2indows 7 "tablet".
If you wanted something useful out of your handheld devices, you would have access to printers and other devies IN SPECIFICATIONS. But then, you would not be able to sign an extremely expensive contract with whoever is supplying Sharepoint-based applications for your system.