I'm working on some laptop mouse reviews, and I found myself expressing a degree of surprise in discovering that Bluetooth mice still exist. Not only do they still exist, but they're growing in capability (this laptop mouse can switch between conventional 2.4Ghz and Bluetooth wireless technologies) and popularity, and prices are coming down. It would take too long to figure out exactly how long ago Bluetooth peripherals made their debut (mid-2000?), but I know I've been seeing Bluetooth mice and keyboards for at least a few years. I never expected it to last this long.
To me, Bluetooth means "expensive and unsupported." Expensive because Bluetooth peripherals don't just cost more than their standard wireless counterparts -- they cost a lot more, sometimes by a factor of two. At one point both Microsoft and Logitech had wireless keyboard and mouse desktop sets that retailed for roughly twice the price of the same products with standard wireless RF technology. Outside of special-case scenarios where there are a number of wireless devices on the same frequency (such as an office with many computers), I could not figure out why anyone would opt for the Bluetooth edition of the desktop keyboard and mouse set. I say Bluetooth means "unsupported" because no desktop computers and a tiny number of laptop computers have Bluetooth transceivers built in. You can of course get a PCI card or USB dongle to add Bluetooth capabilities, but that only adds to the cost of using the Bluetooth peripherals you bought.
When Bluetooth first hit the market, I remember reading commentary from technology analysts predicting that it would completely replace all corded computer peripherals -- mice, keyboards, printers, and anything else that connects to computers -- within a short period of time. So revolutionary was this secure, low-power, long-range wireless technology that it was going to change the way we arranged physical computing environments. The funny thing about outlandish predictions is that they never come true. The only aspect of Bluetooth's history that surprises me is that it hasn't yet been replaced by something more inexpensively implemented.
Nowadays, most people are familiar with Bluetooth because of wireless headsets for cell phones. That is, after all, the market that Bluetooth was designed in and for. I've thought for quite a while that Bluetooth's moonlight career in computer peripherals is coming to an end -- if it ever had much of a beginning -- but now I'm seeing a new generation of portable computer peripherals (mice, mostly) that are Bluetooth-capable. I think perhaps this says more about the evolution of cell phones as computers than it does about the need for laptop mice, though.
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