I spent today wandering around the convention floor at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. While Comdex has suffered a painful decline in relevance and attendance (I frankly don't know which came first), CES remains a vibrant show. Vendors ranging from Sony to Pentax to Monster Cable share the convention floor with less obvious demonstrators like the United States Post Office. While it is not quite the spectacle of E3, some rooms certainly give it a sonic run for its money.
As we arrived at CES this morning, there were a crew of men and women dressed in tuxedos and black dresses. Maybe 20 strong, they stood silently in formation, two by two, all wearing sun glasses that obscured their eyes. It was entirely unclear what purpose they served. The woman beside me in line speculated that they were an acapella group. Sadly, they did not sing. Rather, shortly after we arrived, for no particular reason, at no particular prompting, and delivering no particular message, the men and women in black left.
But that was not the last the we would see of them. Some time later that afternoon, as we searched the floor for Pentax to check out the new Optio S4 (the incredibly cool little digital camera now available in 4 megapixels), our path was blocked by a parade of the same sunglassed people, but this time they were delivering a one word message -- "bluetooth." They said nothing about bluetooth. They spoke no slogans. They didn't even wear wireless headsets. They simply croaked "bluetooth" "bluetooth" "bluetooth." Their intoning of the word "bluetooth" was not even as purposeful as those awful Aflac commercials. The third time we crossed paths with the bluetooth brigade we amused ourselves by saying "WiFi" back at them. They were not amused. Frankly, the didn't have a clue what we were talking about. And it suddenly struck us . . . again . . . that we were serious geeks.
Putting aside the seemingly random bluetooth parade (which turned out to be "Operation Blueshock," a publicity stunt by the Bluetooth SIG), bluetooth actually had a surprisingly large presence at CES. Numerous companies were showing bluetooth enabled products. There were bluetooth headsets. Bluetooth mice. Bluetooth headphones. Bluetooth keyboards. Even a couple different companies demonstrating wireless speakers using bluetooth. While there is no question that many of these devices have come a long way since the early days of bluetooth (some are even great now, which could certainly not be said a year ago), the reality is that most of these products could just as easily utilize IR or FM, rather than bluetooth. And those that couldn't would be better off using WiFi. So despite the bluetooth buzz at CES, I remain a skeptic. Wireless is the present and the future. But I do not believe that bluetooth is here to stay.
Hmmm. First it was DNS problems, and now its a spell checker gone mad. Seems like a number of "they"s, a "that" or two, and other words have been scrunched into "the"s.
Like: "The said nothing about bluetooth."
Otherwise; welcome back from vacation & looking forward to another "insightful" year.
Posted by: Derek W | 01/13/2004 at 09:03 AM
Ok. Fair enough. I have gone back and fixed the typos. Never again. I swear.
Posted by: David Hornik | 01/13/2004 at 09:19 AM
I'm glad I missed the Bluetooth Brigade, but I think that they would have ticked me off just as much as the Samsung "Charlie's Angels/She Spies Fight Scene" floor show or the Canon "Chinese Circus Plate Spinning Girl". I come to the show for two reasons: 1) to be blown away by the innovative gadgets and 2) to take home good schwag. Both of these didn't really happen this year, but at least the companies were making good on some of their promises of open standard ubiquity. I'll bet we see even more PVR's and Remote Media Controllers next year (and hopefully more booth babes too).
Posted by: Marc H. Nathan | 01/13/2004 at 05:12 PM
I'm glad someone finally called bullshit on Bluetooth. Last year I went thru a bluetooth phase and started using a Bluetooth headset on my mobile phone. After several weeks of use I decided that although it looked damn impressive – Bluetooth just wasn't worth it.
Posted by: Andy | 01/13/2004 at 11:25 PM
Personally, power management is already an issue for me for all the gadgets I have. The benefit of hooking my cell phone up to my laptop with a wire is that not only do I not waste any power on transmission of data between them (when doing cell-internet), but that the cell phone can also get a charge at the same time. Having bluetooth for data, but I still have to carry a power dongle would not be any improvement.
Actually, I'm kind of a wireless luddite. I ran Cat5e in my house so I have 100bT in every room. Now if I could only get power in the same plug ...
Posted by: Derek W | 01/14/2004 at 01:49 PM
I was never a huge fan of BT, but this one device changed my mind:
http://www.pilcon.dk/int.asp?menu=products&category=2
I wouldn't buy a non BT phone now that I have this headset. Simply amazing in ease of use, quality, comfort, and size. The only problem is that it is so small and light that they are easy to loose. And expensive to replace.
Hard to justify an entire technology with one device, but this thing comes close. I don't think you could make it this small with RF and maintain battery life and range.
But every other BT headset has been a frustration, and it does feel like one of those transitional standards that will be quickly forgotten.
Alessandro
Posted by: Alessandro Isolani | 01/22/2004 at 10:11 AM