The electronic world of the 21st century hasn't turned out to be everything that futurists promised in the 1950s and 1960s.
Desktops, countertops and car dashboards weren't supposed to have snaking wires everywhere. Electronic devices were supposed to talk to each other through the air.
We are headed in that direction, albeit slowly. One step is a technology called Bluetooth that has taken its sweet time to get to our desktops.
An inexpensive, low-power network that operates in the 2.4-GHz range (along with cell phones and other de- vices), Bluetooth is an industry standard that enables computers to talk to wireless printers and other devices. Bluetooth cell phone headsets don't have to be connected to the phones by wires, and photographs can be sent from Bluetooth-enabled digital camcorders and cameras to computers and e-mail addresses without a cable in sight.
Getting rid of the wires has been a holy grail for years, but it wasn't until 1998 that nine high-tech companies -- including IBM, Microsoft, 3Com, Ericsson and Intel -- agreed to set up a single standard for short-range communications.
Seeking a code name for the project, the engineers settled on the name of Harold Bluetooth, a 10th-century Viking king, to avoid using an acronym or number.
U.S. arrival
The coming year should see Bluetooth grow in popularity in the United States as more devices become available and more consumers become familiar with the technology.
Europeans have been familiar with the technology for some time, according to Michael McGamon, executive director of the industry's Blue- tooth Special Interest Group.
"The European market is driven primarily by the cell phone market, and the United States market is driven primarily by the personal computing market," McGamon says. "As such, we have really seen Bluetooth take off in Europe with many different kinds of mobile phones and accessories, like headsets.
"Bluetooth is coming to market in the U.S. in the form of mobile phones, but we really see the momentum of Bluetooth wireless technology gaining speed as the technology is embedded in more and more personal computing products and operating systems," he says.
Ease of use is still a concern, as I found out when I installed Microsoft's Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth -- a wireless mouse and keyboard.
First, I learned that the devices need Windows XP, Microsoft's latest operating system. They won't work with computers running older versions such as Windows 98.
