Bluetooth holds the promise of a world without wires, and from a user's perspective this can only be a good thing. Wires restrict people and can go wrong. Wireless success stories include infrared remote controls and mobile phones. Both are now ubiquitous, and cheap enough to be bundled as loss leaders with more expensive products.

But from a support viewpoint, wires aren't much of a difficulty - it is usually the applications running over them that cause the headaches. A common complaint with cables is that they become unplugged and, conversely, if they aren't unplugged, any problems are unlikely to have been caused by the cable. It's doubtful that Bluetooth will make things any easier for support staff. When a failure occurs, diagnosing whether or not the wireless connection is at fault can be a difficult task.

Bluetooth is also a poorly defined strategy for the long term. Unfortunately, the diverging efforts of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) and networking committees at the IEEE standards group suggest that even the people who design this technology cannot agree on how to implement it properly. Until they do, we risk poor performance and partial interoperability.

Complex systems work best with standards to ensure interoperability. It is time the SIG stopped behaving as if it was the only team in town.

Finally, something is wrong with the pricing model. Most people expect a cable-replacement system like Bluetooth to cost about the same as the cable being replaced. Advances in chip technology mean that in a few years this could happen. Until then, I'll stick with my infrared.

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