Palm To Have Largest Bluetooth Network in the U.S.

Now the question is: is this a subtle way of advertising OS5 and its built in blue tooth? Or is that really spinning out of control?

I really think Palm could find different ways to use their money for their good than this. I can understand Placing Bluetoth in one of their buildings, but all of them? Isn't this kinda like a story where a corperation has all kinds of money to spend and they build an 18 hole golf course right behind their building so their execs and other people can get a quick round before days start and end? Becuase I feel Palm is doing the same thing here. Probably very few at Palm would use this for real outside of R&D and perhaps a few of the exec people, but do all the buildings just makes me feel like they are doing it for ohhs and ahhs than for any other real reasons.

I am shocked that no one at Palm has no forsight see the problem, and expense that they are about to get themselves into here.

Just my 4 and 1/2 Cents worth.

I would consider it as a test bed for built in BT, but also a way to improve Palm's efficiency.

If you've never had access to wireless on your PDA you have no idea how handy it can be. I used a Minstrel on my PVx for three years and was totally addicted. If I could have the same access within my work environment I would jump at the chance.

Mike

And I agree about this beign part of their R&D. There's no better way to demostrate an idea than to use it yourself.

So recalculating based on that (and not the 300sqft - where the heck did you get that?) you get on the order of 20 APs. Add a few for their thick walled conf rooms and exec office, and you'll probably get 30-40 APs.

Not really that big a spend when you think about it. And probably a big productivity booster, since as someone else mentions, not all of them get freebie i705s. Many of their folks are probably on campus most of the time so that local coverage is good enough.

Maybe not, but I know how to make the stock price go up. Doing a 1 for 20 stock split will make the stock price go up twenty fold. I'll be on the cover of Fortune magazine.

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David

> Wha? pi x 300 is 942 Sq. feet.

300 feet is the radius. The formula for the area of a circle is Pi * r^2. You didn't square the radius.

> You're saying the largest BT network in the US could be comprised of one access point?

Like I said, that's with no walls ceilings or floors to interfere. In reality, there will need to be many more, if for no other reason that only 7 (or is it 8) people can use a single Pico access point at a time.

I suppose you can cite the power consumption of the SD Bluetooth card? I know I've certainly been digging for that. My own PalmOS PDA uses around 45mA with a CF Symbol WiFi card active. Without the card it uses around 33mA (no backlight in either case). Thus the card itself is using about 12mA.

If you look at Socket's CF bluetooth card (Toshiba makes the BT components for both Palm's SD Bluetooth,
and Socket's CF Bluetooth), you see the specs quote power consumption as:

16mA idle
40mA typical
90mA maximum
http://makeashorterlink.com/?O5D6225B1

Also Sharps BT CF products list consumption in the 46-80mA range.
http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/010131.html

It may well be that the SD version uses less power yet, though I'd like to read those numbers to prove it. But even if it does, I can still get well within the general BT specs of 30mA typical usage with my WiFi setup.

Sure I can make the card use more. Turning Power saving down 5 notches I'm up around 100mA (133-33). But then the above numbers would show BT can go nearly that high as well.

There are plenty of nifty things that Bluetooth can do, but let's start talking about those and less about the power issue. My backlight uses more power than my CF WiFi card, so lets put the power issue, in large part, to bed and talk about the more interesting details.

-Craig Bowers

And it's still their main SDIO option to legitimize their SD slot, so they pretty well have to dance with the one wa't brung 'ya (so to speak)

(like I said, take no offense, just clarifying. may be too late for anyone to come back and read this)