H-P demonstrates Bluetooth's bite

Imagine linking up all of your IT devices -- mobile phone, laptop, desktop computer, personal digital assistant (PDA) and printer -- without any cables.

That technology, known as Bluetooth, is capable of doing just that.

One manufacturer at the five-day Taipei Computer Applications Show has used Bluetooth technology to create a new "wireless" environment.

Hewlett-Packard Taiwan Ltd introduced what they touted as the world's first printer to use Bluetooth technology yesterday. As a result, users can take a photo from a PDA and transmit it wirelessly to the H-P printer.

According to Wu Jiang-hong (吳建宏), a technical consultant at H-P Taiwan, the company's DeskJet 995c is the first Bluetooth printer in the world, allowing users to export photos or messages without cables from up to 10m away from other Bluetooth enabled devices.

Bluetooth is a radio frequency specification for short-range voice and data transmission.

This technology facilitates wireless communication between devices that formerly had to use a cable to transfer data.

Despite being around since 1998, Bluetooth technology hasn't seen widespread acceptance by consumers because of high module prices.

"The current price of a Bluetooth module is US$20. We believe Bluetooth will become more prevalent when chips prices drop to US$5 each," said Andy Chiang (江憲明), marketing manager of consumer business at H-P Taiwan.

He said that in the short-term, Bluetooth's popularity may grow slowly, but increasing acceptance by manufactures to build Bluetooth modules into devices will become more evident next year.

A high-level executive from Palm Inc -- a pioneer in the manufacture of handheld devices -- said that price is not the only issue.

"Different manufactures' Bluetooth devices cannot communicate well with each other; therefore, a fully open standard is necessary for Bluetooth to gain popularity," said Connie Chiu (趙瑞芬), Palm's business development director in charge of the north Asia region.

She said that while Palm PDA models such as the M500 and M505 are Bluetooth-ready, the devices will have to wait until the end of the year to be fitted with Bluetooth cards, currently under order from Toshiba.

According to Chiang, H-P's Bluetooth printer can communicate with H-P's Jornada 548 PDA and other brands of PDAs, along with Ericsson's Bluetooth-enabled cellphone, the R520 model.

So why would techies want a cellphone, PDA and printer that can communicate with each other?

It's simple. The the phone dials up the Web at high speed, the PDA acts as a browser screen and the printer prints out material from the Internet.

While Ericsson displayed the R520 at the show, the model is not available in Taiwan; although the company will offer the Bluetooth-enabled T39 to local consumers, which is scheduled to hit stores later this month, according to Peggy Chiang (江珮鈴), a public relations representative from Ericsson Taiwan.