Untangle your life

Cable spaghetti. Anything but tasty, this phenomena has been slowly creeping into our everyday lives ever since the first VHS player was connected to a TV-set. Noone wants to be the one hooking up those brand new PS3 and Wii boxes to the existing array of VHS, DVD, satellite and other "essential" gadgets...
Do we REALLY need all those cables?

Trend-setters in the mobile technology world quickly realized that "mobile" and "wires" don't even belong in the same sentence - everything mobile should be wireLESS. That's not exactly true (yet) - a device always needs a power supply, sometimes a headphone or a mic, occasionally a data transfer cable and maybe a TV-Out... Wait, we're right where we started. As more functionality gets added to our phones, connectivity becomes key and cables are always an easy way out. Is there a better solution? Maybe.

Wi-Fi seems an obvious first choice, with its ever-increasing bandwidth (up to 540 Mbps according to the proposed 802.11n standard), backwards compatibility and a decent security model (as long as the owner knows what they're doing). Add almost universal support by modern laptops and it looks like a
clear winner. However, its' single drawback - high power consumption - is enough to render it useless for most battery-powered gadgets. Plus, since it's retty much a transport layer, something else needs to take care of all the logic involved in interaction between devices, requiring additional CPU power and so on... This just doesn't work for anything that has to rely on a battery.

Meet Bluetooth. This technology was introduced back in 1998 and took several long years to get adopted by the mainstream market (most operating systems only introduced support for it in the past couple of years). In many ways, 2006 was the breakthrough, as most "prosumer" phones started to support the protocol,
USB adapters for it became affordable and even the aforementioned PS3/Wii shipped with Bluetooth controllers. Why the success?

To start off, Bluetooth was designed with low-power devices in mind. A compatible phone can transmit data for hours without needing a recharge (unfortunately, this means range and bandwidth are very limited). Its second objective was to link all kinds of devices by supplying different "profiles". A
multi-functional device can support several profiles - typically phones excel at file exchange, dial-up modem and voice functions.

What does it mean for the consumer? A sea of devices, each providing unique functionality and seamlessly connecting to anything that can utilize it. Microphones, keyboards, headphones, mice... You name it. I have been using Bluetooth for about a year now and in certain instances it does make my life
easier. My stereo headphones provide excellent sound without any wires whatsoever (although I do have to recharge them separately every now and then).  My phone makes an excellent modem that doesn't even have to leave my pocket when my laptop needs Internet access. File transfer doesn't work so well, however - at 40 kb/sec it takes ages to transfer a standard mp3 track from one phone to another.

In general, Bluetooth allows the hardware makers to stop cramming all the functions into one tiny box. I agree with Greg's point of view - consumers can and should assemble their own mini-sets of devices (a so-called PAN, or a Personal Area Network) that precisely fit their needs. This customization is a factor that soon might replace mobile phones as we know them by another, more generic data-centered device.

 All in all, Bluetooth shows great promise. As it continues to evolve, improving its range, compatibility and even spawning off new standards such as Nokia's Wibree, I will need less and less cables. One day, even the power supply might become just another optional item...