General questions about Bluetooth and wireless technology

[psiros]

I'm trying to get a wireless card for my laptop and am a bit confused about the 'new' Bluetooth technology. To me, it just seems like an expensive way to guarentee wireless devices are certified with the 802.11b protocol. Regardless... I'm still not sure whether to shell out the extra $80 for the Bluetooth card when the Linksys card I'm borrowing works just fine. Here's what I'm wondering about Bluetooth:

- All the whitepapers on Bluetooth limit its speed (not sure what this means exactly) to 1 Mbps. Yet all the current 802.11b cards are up to 11 Mbps. How can this be, if Bluetooth is a brand new technology? Am I just reading this wrong?

- The way Motorola, Microsoft, 3Com, et. al. Bluetooth companies make it sound is that current 802.11b capable devices won't work with Bluetooth devices (i.e. other laptops, not necessarilly cell phones), nor will the current 802.11b devices work with the Bluetooth access points. Is this true? And if it is, will the Bluetooth protocol be 'backwards compatable' with 802.11b devices?

- Is Bluetooth 802.11b compliant?

- If a device is 802.11b, will it work with any and all other 802.11b certified devices?

- And what about this whole new 54 Mbps wireless technology being released by SMC? Any thoughts on this? To me, it looks like all of us who are on the wireless bandwagon, Bluetooth or not are going to be SOL with the faster wireless technology because of the frequency shift.

Ok, that's all I've got for now. Any help in regards to my questions are greatly appreciated.

[hapoo]

bluetooth IS NOT 802.11b (wifi)


bluetooth is meant for nearby connections (like printing from your laptop to your printer without wires), its not meant for internet access.

all 802.11b certified devices are technically compatible with one another. they can go as fast as 11mbps. 802.11A which will be released shortly will opperate at 54mbps and is not compatible with 802.11b

[redenergy]

Bluetooth mean for short distance, low power, compatible with all SIG bluetooth devices. It mean to be a(PAN personal area network)

802.11b is wireless LAN, mean to be networking.

Bluetooth still pickup very slow and the software and protocol stack is somewhat complicated to end user. Most of the PDA user will perfer bluetooth because is small form factory, low power... bla bla bla.

So if you are looking for networking only then go for 802.11b. The range about 300 feet in door.

For your questions on compatiblity, some of them working on Access Point that support 2 slots (1 for 802.11b and 1 for bluetooth) but it hard to make it work in reality because of the protocol stack and software/firmware is different from vendor to vendor and for Bluetooth you need to pass the BQB test from SIG bluetooth. For 802.11b they need to pass the WiFi standard.

So both of them have different market on it. Depend what are you looking for, for now i will choose 802.11b ^_^

for 802.11a they still pick up slow and i heard some vendor is making it now and hopefully they can deliver end of this year but 802.11b and 802.11a is not compatible and they are using different RF band.