As others have said, the articles were about cameras, not software.
That said, I'd like to point out that the GIMP can't handle the full resolution of what the better cameras are producing. The issue is that the GIMP can only handle 8 bits per color, and this probably won't be changing for a long time (I think the GIMP developers said, "2006, maybe"). Cameras like the Canon Digital Rebel output RAW files with 12 bits per color, and the GIMP just can't handle this.
On the other hand, cinepaint, a fork of GIMP, can supposedly handle this, but I haven't tried it.
LCDs also drain far more power from your batteries than an optical system.
I want to emphasize this. I used to be an "all cameras must use AA batteries" bigot before I borrowed a friend's Canon Digital Rebel. I was amazed at the battery life. However, I wasn't using an IS lens or AI servo focus.
The mirror also serves to help keep dust off the CCD whilst changing lenses, although this could be worked around.
No. Dust on a DSLR sensor is significant problem, especially with zoom lenses (because, with many zoom lenses, zooming in/out will pump air/dust from the outside into the internal sensor cavity). For cleaning information, see http://www.pbase.com/copperhill/ccd_cleaning.
Personally I think I would run Photoshop and my camera vendors RAW utilities under xover office before just dumping the data to TIFF, otherwise why not just use superfine JPEG?
Canon RAW has 12 bits per color; jpeg has only 8, and even superfine jpeg loses some image detail from the lossy compression (although whether or not it's significant depends on the subject). The extra four bits can be very significant when processing to bring out extra shadow detail.
Also, as much as I like GIMP, the GIMP can't take full advantage of RAW, as it can only handle 8 bits per color (not 12). Your point about conversion is true only if you convert from RAW to 8-bit (per color) TIFF. Converting to 16-bit (per color) TIFF is much better (although, as I've said, the GIMP can't handle this).
The biggest problem is that there is only one (linux) editor that can properly handle RAW files, and it's not the GIMP (it's cinepaint, which is a fork of GIMP).
The issue is that, to take full advantage of RAW, you need an editor that can handle at least 16 bits per color (48bpp), and the GIMP can only handle 8 bits (and, when asked about >8-bit support, I think the GIMP developers said something like, "2006, maybe"). Having the extra resolution is very nice when trying to pull out shadow details. (OK, Canon RAW has only 12 bits, but 12 bits is still more than GIMP can handle.)
(For the unwashed in the peanut gallery: yes, most people don't need more than 8 bits per color when printing, but I'm not talking about printing. Think about it.)
I'm curious as to what their definition of "low power" is. Low, compared to a power-sucking P4 or Athlon, maybe, but probably not very low by low power standards.
I've just set up a similar system as an home file server (no wireless, though, and I've added a cheap DVDROM drive), and my box is sucking up around 55-60W, idle. That's measured via an actual wattmeter connected to the power cord, and not by multiplying V*A.
On second thought, maybe a soekris board and a 2.5" disk drive might have been a better solution (less RAM and CPU, which would probably be fine for an home fileserver, but the power usage would probably be in the 10-20W range).
Another important consideration is that I've been holding floor models, which probably have a harder life than a camera you're borrowing from a friend. It's possbile that some of the flex comes from abuse, though that's not particularly reassuring when considering the long-term lifespan of the camera. I sort of doubt this possibility, though, since I've felt three different ones and had about the same feeling from each.
True, true. There's no doubt that the 10D's build quality is better ("rock-solid, rock-heavy"). I'm just trying to point out that, for some people, the plastic body isn't really an issue (except for the color), although there may be other issues (FEC, AI servo) why they might want a 10D instead. They've got to decide if the extra features are worth the extra cost.
Going off on a slight tangent, I wonder how long the "typical lifetime" of the 300D/10D will be, given how often we upgrade computers, etc.. For hardcore (er, "professional";-) photographers, the cost of the camera body will probably be insignificant, compared to the lenses and other accessories. "Long-term lifespan" may not really be an issue for some folks (but will, of course, be one for others), as the body may only have to last, say, 2-3 years (and then you upgrade to the 11+MP version;-). For better or worse, we seem to have come a long way from the "buy a good camera, keep it for 20-30 years" philosophy.
I have to disagree about the plastic vs. metal case. I can feel the 300D creak just a bit when I grip it firmly, which is not reassuring compared to the physical solidity of the 10D.
I've heard about the "creak", but was unable to really reproduce it on the one that I played with for a weekend. I tried squeezing and twisting the case, but it didn't really move (of course, I didn't try really hard;-).
Maybe there are production consistency issues
(in the past, there appeared to be issues with focus calibration)? Mine was "solid", and the one you saw was "less solid"?
Glad to see GIMP getting an award. The new version is excellent on Windows XP, too. Amazing! If you need a program to edit photos, GIMP is all you need.
While it's nice to see GIMP getting an award, GIMP is NOT all you need.
It lacks 16-bit-per-color (48-bpp) editing support.
"Why is this stupid feature necessary?", you ask?
It's needed because of cameras like the Canon EOS-300D/10D (see the other slashdot article). Canon's RAW format is wonderful for people who need to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of their camera, at the expense of possibly tedious, extra post-processing. RAW gives you more headroom to avoid blown highlights (along with a possibly higher S/N ratio), and more shadow detail, among other things. Canon's in-camera JPEG processing also seems to throw away nearly half (yes, supposedly "one-half") of the sensor's dynamic range, whereas you get access to the full range with RAW. Unfortunately, GIMP can only handle 8-bits per color (24-bpp), and RAW requires 16-bit (well, 12-bits, actually, as Canon's RAW only has 12-bits per color). What's worse is that, if you read the GIMP lists, 16-bit support is probably years away (I think someone mentioned "2006, maybe").
Cinepaint, a fork of GIMP, can supposedly handle Canon RAW files, but I haven't tried it (I haven't gotten around to building it under Linux, and win32 support is minimal).
Also, the EOS-300D has a cheap-feeling plastic body while the EOS-10D has a black magnesium body.
Having played with both the 300D and 10D, I don't think the plastic body is really an issue (except, maybe, for poseurs, or for people who bang and bang and scratch and bang their cameras around;-). I found it to be surprisingly solid (I was expecting flimsy, cheesy plastic), and lightweight, compared to the rock-solid and rock-heavy 10D.
(However, if you're prone to banging around something as expensive as a 300D/10D, I think you have bigger problems.;-)
I think the only real complaint about the plastic is that it is not black, which means that you are likelier to see the reflection of the camera when shooting through a window or something similar. However, Canon is selling a black 300D in Japan (I don't know if and when it'll hit the US).
While there may be valid reasons for a person to get a 10D over a 300D (lack of FEC, no independent AI servo focus, etc.), I don't think the plastic case is one, unless color is an issue.
I use an high-quality, local ISP, and they have an amazingly reasonable TOS. Most of their DSL offerings give static IP addrs (4-8), and they generally don't care if you run servers on the DSL line (although filling the pipe 24x7 is a no-no). This includes non-business accounts. Ports aren't blocked, except maybe temporarily during some of the bad worm/virus outbreaks (your service may be temporarily cutoff if you leave an infected PC connected to the DSL line, though). I can usually quickly talk to an actual human when calling support, and they're even clueful. A couple years back, I actually had an intelligent conversation with them regarding ISDN and an old Ascend Pipeline 50 (what was even more shocking was that a real human actually answered on the second ring, and that I didn't even get to any kind of voice menu).
They're not perfect, although, compared to the "horror stories" that you see here, they may certainly seem so.
Also, while they don't officially support linux (their user shell server is linux, though), they're more than happy to give out the DNS and mail settings that you need to setup linux. (I'm also lucky enough to get 6Mbps DSL, whoo-hoo! Unfortunately, they're no longer offering it, although they still have a 1.5-3Mbps service.)
Bottom line: look for a new ISP. I suggest looking on DSL reports.
If you only want to create a low-power firewall, take a look at the Soekris boxes, which are designed to run FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Some models have three (3) lan ports, as well as (optional) PCMCIA slots (for wireless LAN applications). Most versions boot from compact flash (or a microdrive), but there's a version that supports a 2.5" IDE laptop drive (however, note that the optional case for the IDE drive version supposedly has poor ventilation, and so the drive supposedly runs hot -- see the mailing list below). The processors are a tad slow (100-266MHz 486-class processors), but they're generally more than enough for firewall/access point purposes.
The Sharp Zaurus line is appealing, but the last I heard there was no syncing solution at all for the Mac, even from 3rd party's.
Even if there was a Mac syncing solution for the Zaurus, I'd strongly recommend that you take a good, hard look at the Zaurus PIM apps before making a decision.
I have both a Zaurus and a Palm (a Clie, actually), and the Palm is what I use, because I need a PDA with good PIM apps. After being spoiled by DateBk5 on the Palm, there's no way I could use the Zaurus. And, I'd be willing to pay US$100 for Zaurus PIM apps with equivalent functionality and usability (DateBK5 is soooo incredibly polished).
Here's a basic example: on the Zaurus, create an appointment that's five minutes long, and give it some descriptive text. On my Zaurus, this is displayed this as a completely unusable and unreadable line of pixels. On the Palm, it's just displayed as completely readable text.
(Oh, and don't even get me started on the fact that I have to use a #$%^&*()?%! dialog box to enter text. On the Palm, I just write or type. For the virgins out there, this is the difference between on-screen editing (the Palm) and using dialog boxes for all editing (the Z).)
1. Get rid or move the fscking capslock key out of the way. It's a waste of prime real-estate.
So remap the key(s). It's not difficult.
Under Unix/X11, it's a simple xmodmap twiddle. Under WinNT/2K/XP, there's a registry hack that allows you to remap keys at a very low level (down at the scancode level, which affects all applications, including ctrl-alt-delete, if you remap the caps/ctrl keys).
My (locally-owned) ISP doesn't care about bandwidth used by their DSL customers. Their AUP (acceptable usage policy) explicitly says that their quota policies do not apply to anything downloaded to your PC (or uploaded, I imagine, as the upload BW is much smaller than the download BW).
However, they do care about the (http, ftp, etc.) bandwidth used by hosted services. For these, there is an explicit quota, which varies by account type (1GB/month for basic DSL, but there are additional-cost add-on services that increase the monthly limit). Cost is $4.95 per GB, above the limit (I think you can also auto-disable your hosted services if you go over quota).
Problem ONE with computers is the total lack of adequate backups. Yeah yeah Norton Ghost and tar and yeah yeah yeah. Back up a 120GB hard drive with Ghost and a CD-R. My ass.
You're using the wrong tools.
Put the OLD Drive Image 2002 (not the latest version) onto a bootable CDROM with network drivers (using Bart's network boot floppy as a starting point), and you can do disaster recovery by booting the CDROM and backing up to a network share (samba and FreeBSD/linux work well for this). This works unbelievably well. The only thing not backed up (I think) is the drive SID, but there are other tools that can handle this.
(You'll probably also have to tweak the samba config, like "
socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=4096", to get around slow dos network transfers.)
Of course, even with compression, you do need to have a large samba share to back up 120GB disks.
(If the samba share has a DVD+/-R/RW drive, you can also back up the images to DVD, but you should probably have drive image auto-split the backups into manageable-sized chunks if you do this.)
I'll second the recommendation for DriveImage 2002 (the DOS version of which, I believe, comes with DriveImage 7.0). Anyway, the MSDOS version of DI 2002 is very/muy/sehr/totemo nice, especially if you put it onto a bootable CDROM with network drivers (so that you can backup partitions to a samba share). The advantage here is that you don't need to install anything to your hard disk, and disaster recovery becomes much simpler (you restore from the image, and do not have to bother reinstalling windows).
(side note: it's best if you create your own bootable CDROM with network drivers. I think the DI 2002 comes with a way of doing so, but I could never get it to work. I found it easier (and better) to use
Bart's network boot floppy instructions and make it into a bootable CDROM.)
Cheap route: cron jobs/Windows task scheduler to copy important folders across the network every night
Also, for those people concerned about leaving another "backup server" running 24x7, you can make use of the "wake on LAN" capability to do backups (available on many LAN/motherboards). Just wake up (boot) the "backup server", do your backup, and then shut it down. It's way cool to remote-boot home servers.
Here, the only real issue is the power/thermal cycling of the hard disk once a day (or whatever), which might be a problem since many disks now tend to come with only a one-year warranty. However, this isn't all that different from a regularly-used PC.
Or maybe I've just dreamed up a calculator so excessive you'd be better off using a small laptop.
You have. A laptop would have equivalent functionality, and be more general to boot (useful for other things, like Unreal Tournament;-). Features and generality aside, the only thing that a calculator has going for it (but it's a big thing), is a dedicated keyboard; don't underestimate the usability of a dedicated calculator keyboard.
On another topic: for cheap symbolic math, check out maxima.
Considering that many providers (in the *US*) charge by the kilobyte, the phone companies probably think they can make a killing by making people send multi-megabyte pics.
I've never understood the need for bluetooth keyboard and mice. I've got a non-bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse, and it's "good enough". Sure, bluetooth would be cooler, but the old tech is "good enough" (yes, BT is lower power, but the old tech is "low power" enough, too).
BT keyboard w/BT laptop is something of a special case. If you're using an external keyboard with the laptop, you probably have other (non-BT?) connections (e.g., LAN) going to the laptop, too. For this case, a docking station to handle all of the connections might be a better choice (e.g., big fat LAN pipe, & wireless keyboard/mouse). The point is that, for this case, you probably have to make other connections, which negates some of the coolness of the BT keyboard.
I'm not complaining about the coolness, mind you -- a BT keyboard and BT laptop are way cool, but it's questionable for the average Joe.
Now, on the other hand, BT headsets are way cool, like the Jabra one. It's really nice to be able to throw your cell phone into your backpack or fanny pack, and be able to answer it by pressing a button on your ear.;-) This does, of course, require a BT-enabled cell phone which, in the US, seems to require GSM, and GSM coverage is still pretty spotty in the US.;-( On the other hand, many US GSM phones (but not all) will also work internationally.
Re:OK, here's how they work
on
NYT on RFID
·
· Score: 1
All the RFID tag does, once it comes into range of the transmitter, is continuously send out a series of zeros and ones by going low and high resistance. It is up to the transmitter to spot the resistance of the remote end.
How does the transmitter differentiate between multiple RFID tags? If they're all active, the bitstream "interpreted" by the transmitter is going to be garbage.
Slashdot Mirror
As others have said, the articles were about cameras, not software.
That said, I'd like to point out that the GIMP can't handle the full resolution of what the better cameras are producing. The issue is that the GIMP can only handle 8 bits per color, and this probably won't be changing for a long time (I think the GIMP developers said, "2006, maybe"). Cameras like the Canon Digital Rebel output RAW files with 12 bits per color, and the GIMP just can't handle this.
On the other hand, cinepaint, a fork of GIMP, can supposedly handle this, but I haven't tried it.
Canon RAW has 12 bits per color; jpeg has only 8, and even superfine jpeg loses some image detail from the lossy compression (although whether or not it's significant depends on the subject). The extra four bits can be very significant when processing to bring out extra shadow detail.
Also, as much as I like GIMP, the GIMP can't take full advantage of RAW, as it can only handle 8 bits per color (not 12). Your point about conversion is true only if you convert from RAW to 8-bit (per color) TIFF. Converting to 16-bit (per color) TIFF is much better (although, as I've said, the GIMP can't handle this).
The biggest problem is that there is only one (linux) editor that can properly handle RAW files, and it's not the GIMP (it's cinepaint, which is a fork of GIMP).
The issue is that, to take full advantage of RAW, you need an editor that can handle at least 16 bits per color (48bpp), and the GIMP can only handle 8 bits (and, when asked about >8-bit support, I think the GIMP developers said something like, "2006, maybe"). Having the extra resolution is very nice when trying to pull out shadow details. (OK, Canon RAW has only 12 bits, but 12 bits is still more than GIMP can handle.)
I'm curious as to what their definition of "low power" is. Low, compared to a power-sucking P4 or Athlon, maybe, but probably not very low by low power standards.
I've just set up a similar system as an home file server (no wireless, though, and I've added a cheap DVDROM drive), and my box is sucking up around 55-60W, idle. That's measured via an actual wattmeter connected to the power cord, and not by multiplying V*A.
On second thought, maybe a soekris board and a 2.5" disk drive might have been a better solution (less RAM and CPU, which would probably be fine for an home fileserver, but the power usage would probably be in the 10-20W range).
True, true. There's no doubt that the 10D's build quality is better ("rock-solid, rock-heavy"). I'm just trying to point out that, for some people, the plastic body isn't really an issue (except for the color), although there may be other issues (FEC, AI servo) why they might want a 10D instead. They've got to decide if the extra features are worth the extra cost.
Going off on a slight tangent, I wonder how long the "typical lifetime" of the 300D/10D will be, given how often we upgrade computers, etc.. For hardcore (er, "professional" ;-) photographers, the cost of the camera body will probably be insignificant, compared to the lenses and other accessories. "Long-term lifespan" may not really be an issue for some folks (but will, of course, be one for others), as the body may only have to last, say, 2-3 years (and then you upgrade to the 11+MP version ;-). For better or worse, we seem to have come a long way from the "buy a good camera, keep it for 20-30 years" philosophy.
I've heard about the "creak", but was unable to really reproduce it on the one that I played with for a weekend. I tried squeezing and twisting the case, but it didn't really move (of course, I didn't try really hard ;-).
Maybe there are production consistency issues (in the past, there appeared to be issues with focus calibration)? Mine was "solid", and the one you saw was "less solid"?
While it's nice to see GIMP getting an award, GIMP is NOT all you need.
It lacks 16-bit-per-color (48-bpp) editing support.
"Why is this stupid feature necessary?", you ask?
It's needed because of cameras like the Canon EOS-300D/10D (see the other slashdot article). Canon's RAW format is wonderful for people who need to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of their camera, at the expense of possibly tedious, extra post-processing. RAW gives you more headroom to avoid blown highlights (along with a possibly higher S/N ratio), and more shadow detail, among other things. Canon's in-camera JPEG processing also seems to throw away nearly half (yes, supposedly "one-half") of the sensor's dynamic range, whereas you get access to the full range with RAW. Unfortunately, GIMP can only handle 8-bits per color (24-bpp), and RAW requires 16-bit (well, 12-bits, actually, as Canon's RAW only has 12-bits per color). What's worse is that, if you read the GIMP lists, 16-bit support is probably years away (I think someone mentioned "2006, maybe").
Cinepaint, a fork of GIMP, can supposedly handle Canon RAW files, but I haven't tried it (I haven't gotten around to building it under Linux, and win32 support is minimal).
Having played with both the 300D and 10D, I don't think the plastic body is really an issue (except, maybe, for poseurs, or for people who bang and bang and scratch and bang their cameras around ;-). I found it to be surprisingly solid (I was expecting flimsy, cheesy plastic), and lightweight, compared to the rock-solid and rock-heavy 10D.
(However, if you're prone to banging around something as expensive as a 300D/10D, I think you have bigger problems. ;-)
I think the only real complaint about the plastic is that it is not black, which means that you are likelier to see the reflection of the camera when shooting through a window or something similar. However, Canon is selling a black 300D in Japan (I don't know if and when it'll hit the US).
While there may be valid reasons for a person to get a 10D over a 300D (lack of FEC, no independent AI servo focus, etc.), I don't think the plastic case is one, unless color is an issue.
You need to find a better ISP.
I use an high-quality, local ISP, and they have an amazingly reasonable TOS. Most of their DSL offerings give static IP addrs (4-8), and they generally don't care if you run servers on the DSL line (although filling the pipe 24x7 is a no-no). This includes non-business accounts. Ports aren't blocked, except maybe temporarily during some of the bad worm/virus outbreaks (your service may be temporarily cutoff if you leave an infected PC connected to the DSL line, though). I can usually quickly talk to an actual human when calling support, and they're even clueful. A couple years back, I actually had an intelligent conversation with them regarding ISDN and an old Ascend Pipeline 50 (what was even more shocking was that a real human actually answered on the second ring, and that I didn't even get to any kind of voice menu).
They're not perfect, although, compared to the "horror stories" that you see here, they may certainly seem so.
Also, while they don't officially support linux (their user shell server is linux, though), they're more than happy to give out the DNS and mail settings that you need to setup linux. (I'm also lucky enough to get 6Mbps DSL, whoo-hoo! Unfortunately, they're no longer offering it, although they still have a 1.5-3Mbps service.)
Bottom line: look for a new ISP. I suggest looking on DSL reports.
There's a mailing list:
There's also, "m0n0wall", a FreeBSD-based firewall originally designed for the soekris boards:
I'm in the process of upgrading my home firewall to soekris/m0n0wall, although I plan on using an EPIA VIA M 10000 board for an home fileserver.
Also note that a new version of WordPress was just released over the weekend. This version is much nicer than the old version, which is probably what was previewable on opensourcecms.
Check it out.
Even if there was a Mac syncing solution for the Zaurus, I'd strongly recommend that you take a good, hard look at the Zaurus PIM apps before making a decision.
I have both a Zaurus and a Palm (a Clie, actually), and the Palm is what I use, because I need a PDA with good PIM apps. After being spoiled by DateBk5 on the Palm, there's no way I could use the Zaurus. And, I'd be willing to pay US$100 for Zaurus PIM apps with equivalent functionality and usability (DateBK5 is soooo incredibly polished).
Here's a basic example: on the Zaurus, create an appointment that's five minutes long, and give it some descriptive text. On my Zaurus, this is displayed this as a completely unusable and unreadable line of pixels. On the Palm, it's just displayed as completely readable text.
So remap the key(s). It's not difficult.
Under Unix/X11, it's a simple xmodmap twiddle. Under WinNT/2K/XP, there's a registry hack that allows you to remap keys at a very low level (down at the scancode level, which affects all applications, including ctrl-alt-delete, if you remap the caps/ctrl keys).
It probably depends on your ISP.
My (locally-owned) ISP doesn't care about bandwidth used by their DSL customers. Their AUP (acceptable usage policy) explicitly says that their quota policies do not apply to anything downloaded to your PC (or uploaded, I imagine, as the upload BW is much smaller than the download BW).
However, they do care about the (http, ftp, etc.) bandwidth used by hosted services. For these, there is an explicit quota, which varies by account type (1GB/month for basic DSL, but there are additional-cost add-on services that increase the monthly limit). Cost is $4.95 per GB, above the limit (I think you can also auto-disable your hosted services if you go over quota).
You're using the wrong tools.
Put the OLD Drive Image 2002 (not the latest version) onto a bootable CDROM with network drivers (using Bart's network boot floppy as a starting point), and you can do disaster recovery by booting the CDROM and backing up to a network share (samba and FreeBSD/linux work well for this). This works unbelievably well. The only thing not backed up (I think) is the drive SID, but there are other tools that can handle this.
Of course, even with compression, you do need to have a large samba share to back up 120GB disks. (If the samba share has a DVD+/-R/RW drive, you can also back up the images to DVD, but you should probably have drive image auto-split the backups into manageable-sized chunks if you do this.)
Urg. Right. Brain fart. Sorry.
Umm, in what medium??? In vacuum, the "law" is closer to 186282.4 miles per hour.
</analretentivemode>
(sorry, couldn't resist ;-)
Yes!
I'll second the recommendation for DriveImage 2002 (the DOS version of which, I believe, comes with DriveImage 7.0). Anyway, the MSDOS version of DI 2002 is very/muy/sehr/totemo nice, especially if you put it onto a bootable CDROM with network drivers (so that you can backup partitions to a samba share). The advantage here is that you don't need to install anything to your hard disk, and disaster recovery becomes much simpler (you restore from the image, and do not have to bother reinstalling windows).
Also, for those people concerned about leaving another "backup server" running 24x7, you can make use of the "wake on LAN" capability to do backups (available on many LAN/motherboards). Just wake up (boot) the "backup server", do your backup, and then shut it down. It's way cool to remote-boot home servers.
Here, the only real issue is the power/thermal cycling of the hard disk once a day (or whatever), which might be a problem since many disks now tend to come with only a one-year warranty. However, this isn't all that different from a regularly-used PC.
You need to follow the comp.sys.hp48 newsgroup. I don't think you'll like the hp49g+ keyboard.
You have. A laptop would have equivalent functionality, and be more general to boot (useful for other things, like Unreal Tournament ;-). Features and generality aside, the only thing that a calculator has going for it (but it's a big thing), is a dedicated keyboard; don't underestimate the usability of a dedicated calculator keyboard.
On another topic: for cheap symbolic math, check out maxima.
It's all marketing.
Considering that many providers (in the *US*) charge by the kilobyte, the phone companies probably think they can make a killing by making people send multi-megabyte pics.
I've never understood the need for bluetooth keyboard and mice. I've got a non-bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse, and it's "good enough". Sure, bluetooth would be cooler, but the old tech is "good enough" (yes, BT is lower power, but the old tech is "low power" enough, too).
BT keyboard w/BT laptop is something of a special case. If you're using an external keyboard with the laptop, you probably have other (non-BT?) connections (e.g., LAN) going to the laptop, too. For this case, a docking station to handle all of the connections might be a better choice (e.g., big fat LAN pipe, & wireless keyboard/mouse). The point is that, for this case, you probably have to make other connections, which negates some of the coolness of the BT keyboard.
I'm not complaining about the coolness, mind you -- a BT keyboard and BT laptop are way cool, but it's questionable for the average Joe.
Now, on the other hand, BT headsets are way cool , like the Jabra one. It's really nice to be able to throw your cell phone into your backpack or fanny pack, and be able to answer it by pressing a button on your ear. ;-) This does, of course, require a BT-enabled cell phone which, in the US, seems to require GSM, and GSM coverage is still pretty spotty in the US. ;-( On the other hand, many US GSM phones (but not all) will also work internationally.
How does the transmitter differentiate between multiple RFID tags? If they're all active, the bitstream "interpreted" by the transmitter is going to be garbage.