Consider the common chore of hooking up a printer to your personal computer. Today you
have to buy a big, thick, ungainly cable with multi-pin connectors on either end, plug the
cable into the proper ports on the back of both your PC and your printer, and go through a
complex setup procedure to make sure your PC recognizes the printer. Even when everything
goes right—and it often doesn’t!—the process is a pain in the rear, especially if you want to
put your printer in a place that is either awkward to get to or far enough away from your PC
that the standard cables won’t quite reach.
Now imagine that same task in a Bluetooth-enabled world. In this world, your printer sends
and receives data to and from your PC via a wireless connection, so you don’t have to mess
with that bulky computer cable. That means that you can place your printer anywhere you
want—even clear across the room!—because you’re not limited by the constraints imposed by
cable connections. Plus, since Bluetooth is a technology that automatically recognizes all
active devices in the vicinity, the process of configuring your computer for your specific
printer will become much easier—in many cases, totally automatic.
If the thought of hooking up your printer without a cable sounds appealing, think of all the
other devices you currently have plugged into your PC. If you’re like many computer users,
you have at least a half-dozen different items wired to your system unit, including your
keyboard, mouse, joystick, speakers (two or more, most likely), microphone, personal digital
assistant, scanner, digital still camera, PC/Web camera, video camera, and, of course, your
printer. In addition, you can’t forget the connection between your PC’s modem and the
nearest phone jack, nor the network connection that is required of any PC connected to a local
area network. Today, every one of these connections is made with a cable; with Bluetooth
technology, almost all of these connections can be wireless.
Think of how cluttered the back of your computer (and the back of your desk!) looks today,
and then try to envision the same setup, but without cables. That is how things will look when
Bluetooth technology invades your desktop.
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