Wednesday, July 24, 2002
Bluetooth vs. WiFi: Why it's NOT a death match
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 12:20 PM
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2868374,00.html
This article is from May, but I think it's a good resource for those of you who are confused about the differences between WiFi and Bluetooth. They are not competing technologies, but with the rise of Bluetooth access points, there's a lot of confusion about what each technology is good at. Give this article a read to find out.
"Does the world really need two wireless networking technologies? Bluetooth and WiFi (aka 802.11b) have both been much in the news lately. Of the two, WiFi got the fastest start. But Bluetooth is gaining traction in the marketplace; Microsoft, for example, has announced that it will build native Bluetooth support into a future version of Windows XP.
Yesterday I wrote about a new Bluetooth printing kit, which lets me print from a laptop to my Epson inkjet without wires. Yet I already have a WiFi network, which I can use for printer sharing and other connected applications. The only limitation of that network: The PC that's connected to the printer has to be turned on before I can print from another device.
Which raises a passel of questions: Why should I pay for Bluetooth printing when I already have WiFi? Are the two technologies complementary or competitive? To go back to my original question, do we really need two different kinds of wireless networking that--on the surface, at least--seem to do many of the same things?"
This article is from May, but I think it's a good resource for those of you who are confused about the differences between WiFi and Bluetooth. They are not competing technologies, but with the rise of Bluetooth access points, there's a lot of confusion about what each technology is good at. Give this article a read to find out.
"Does the world really need two wireless networking technologies? Bluetooth and WiFi (aka 802.11b) have both been much in the news lately. Of the two, WiFi got the fastest start. But Bluetooth is gaining traction in the marketplace; Microsoft, for example, has announced that it will build native Bluetooth support into a future version of Windows XP.
Yesterday I wrote about a new Bluetooth printing kit, which lets me print from a laptop to my Epson inkjet without wires. Yet I already have a WiFi network, which I can use for printer sharing and other connected applications. The only limitation of that network: The PC that's connected to the printer has to be turned on before I can print from another device.
Which raises a passel of questions: Why should I pay for Bluetooth printing when I already have WiFi? Are the two technologies complementary or competitive? To go back to my original question, do we really need two different kinds of wireless networking that--on the surface, at least--seem to do many of the same things?"
