Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2000 13:33:27 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Swindells <rjs@fdy2.demon.co.uk> To: chad@DCFinc.com Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Irda support Message-ID: <200008051233.NAA00696@fdy2.demon.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <200008041843.LAA24926@freeway.dcfinc.com> (chad@DCFinc.com)
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Chad R. Larson wrote: >As I recall, Nik Clayton wrote: >> There are a bunch of mobile phones out here with built in modems. Point >> the phone at the computer and suddenly (in Windows) you've got a modem >> attached to COM2 (or whatever) -- again, without needing the additional >> cabling. This is a good thing. >Of course, this is also the promise of Bluetooth, but with >spread-spectrum wireless instead of infared. Bluetooth only gives you 1Mbps, IRDA will do up to 4Mbps. I have found it to be more reliable than IRDA though, and obviously it works over greater distances. The phone manufacturers must have finalized their GPRS phone designs by now. Since Bluetooth won't be usable in time, it would make sense for them to continue to include IRDA. In addition, you can't just hack together your own Bluetooth stack and use it, you need to get it approved which is *very* expensive. This is going to make it hard to produce a usable Open Source stack, since the approval is for the stack/board/antenna combination. I would say that there is still a window of 18-24 months where IRDA support will be useful. After that, I would expect the UTMS phones to become Bluetooth only. Robert Swindells To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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