Why Are Bluetooth Mice Proliferating?

Bluetooth is one of those half-baked technologies that was allowed to get through because it was designed by committee, and none of the members could stand to think their progeny should be either rethought, or euthanized.

Yet, with all the problems, mice, headsets and other products continue to be manufactured, which only proves that P.T. Barnum was right – there is a sucker born every minute.

In the past 2 days, I have seen two different blurbs in opinion columns, showing the latest efforts from Logitech and Sony. The Sony mouse has the double problem of being almost as ugly as that original mouse, hacked out of a block of wood.

Stylish Sony VGP-BMS10 Bluetooth Laser Mouse – yes, stylish, if you’re blind…

George Ou, when at PC Magazine, proved conclusively that wi-fi and Bluetooth don’t play well together, as they both use the 2.4 GHz band, and this shows yet another problem with wi-fi as well. Cheap devices designed for 2.4 GHz are not especially good at keeping within the boundaries of their channel assignments. In industry terms, this is called bleeding.

So, we have mice, wireless headsets, cordless phones, and 802.11 b/g/n all sharing the bandwidth, and trampling all over each other. How many of these things does your household own? Have you ever had a Bluetooth mouse jump when someone uses the cordless phone in your house? How about your transfer speed suddenly dying when a call comes in over your cell phone Bluetooth headset, permanently ensconced on your ear?

At least the cordless phone companies got the message, which is a large part of what the DECT 6.0 standard was all about; cordless phones that don’t interfere with wi-fi, and the converse as well. How did they do it? The designers got the heck out of the 2.4 GHz band.

In an accustomarily smart move, Microsoft stopped making Bluetooth mice about 3 years ago, but did so quietly, so that all the products in the retail channel would not become leperous.

So, why do Sony and Logitech bring out mice that will have problems, and much larger than normal return rates? Is it the behavior of companies who don’t care? Perhaps these companies also believe you can fool some of the people, all of the time.

§

•

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.Lucius Annaeus Seneca

‘

remember, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – and Opera has many imitators.

•