Eliminate wire spaghetti on your home PC

Filed in archive Hardware on April 25, 2007

OK, I have a problem, and it has been growing for the past five years. Every time I buy a new technology addition to my computer corner it comes complete with a fat black transformer/plug combination and another cord to connect to a USB port of some other port on my router or computers. I seem to have a habit of multiplying these, including two printers, a network router, a USB hub, 5.1 surround sound, plus ordinary little speakers on another computer, and so on.

Looking under my desk there is a mass of wires that must be some type of hazard -- maybe firs hazard, health hazard, or just a hazard of not knowing which wires I can pull from that mess to reduce the spaghetti effect. What to do to reduce the problem?

Enter the idea of reducing cables through bluetooth technology. Mice, keyboards, printers, laptops, audio headphones, speakers, cameras, a variety of mobile devices, such as a mobile phone -- all of these can be obtained running bluetooth. So here is my project for the next 12 months. Every time I am tempted to buy something more for my office I should find out if the device can be run using a bluetooth connection.

So what is bluetooth and how can I get bluetooth items working on my ordinary tower PC?

Bluetooth is a radio technology that works between 1 meter and 100 meters between communication points. To bluetooth enable you PC you typically would need to purchase a "bluetooth dongle" which is a pocket sized gizmo that fits into a USB port. If you have purchased a bluetooth enabled printer you would not need a printer cable between the printer and the bluetooth enabled PC. You can also run a keyboard, mouse and/or camera and other devices. What is more, it is entirely possible for multiple bluetooth devices to communicate with a single dongle (much better than infrared which required one infrared dongle per device).

There is a little "gotcha" with bluetooth enabled devices. They all need power and in the case of a keyboard that usually connects to a PC and gains its power through that source, now the keyboard needs power through installing batteries, or having a power cord to a local outlet. So just by adding bluetooth technology we do not always reduce the number of wires spaghetiying around the place; they just go to different places.

From the few first steps in reducing wires, I have found it possible to do, but one must really select the item carefully to ensure its purchase and use will eliminate wires. Let me give you an example. I had a choice of three bluetooth keyboards; only one of these keyboards had the facility to install batteries. The others all had a wire and outlet adapter thus defeating the purpose.

Bluetooth technology is not really useful in offices due to the potential for other people to obtain unauthorized access of information from a wireless device (bluesnarfing) or sending of unsolicited messages over a bluetooth connection (bluejacking). But because of the limitation of bluetooth communication (at the most 100 meters) it is unlikely to have someone bluesnarfing and bluejacking while you are at home.