The concept of Bluetooth PAN in home computing has given a technology boost to the PC market. This article will tell you about Bluetooth in home computer.
Conventional computers (PCs) have been reigning ‘Personalized Computing’ market since Home PCs came into existence. It’s only with the advent of laptops and Netbooks that Personal Computers have started losing their business in a fast paced manner.
The major reason why laptops are now being preferred over Personal Computers is because of its Portability and Integrity. Portability is a characteristic which cannot be achieved with Personal computers, as the bulky hardware that constitutes a PC can’t be carried along so easily.
By integrity, we mean that every single constituent of a PC, such as Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, Webcam, processor(CPU), CD/DVD ROM, speakers etc. are all built into one single unit called a laptop. This way, one does not need to take the hassles of buying, cabling and carrying along individual components of their computing device.
The only proven saviour to PC market these days has been an amalgamation of ‘Bluetooth’ technology and ‘Personal Area Network’. Just to make home computing experience much better and enhanced, most of the computer peripherals are now coming up with Bluetooth support.
As Bluetooth is a wireless communication standard for short range data transmission, it can be effectively used as a medium for the exchange of data between various computer peripherals, eliminating the need of cables for data exchange.
Most of the computer peripherals such as Keyboard, Mouse, printer, headphone, webcam, internet modem among others are all coming up with built-in Bluetooth support these days. And with all these peripherals going wireless, the ease of using PC has improved a lot than before.
On a technical note, the use of Bluetooth technology as an alternative to conventional cables actually creates a Personal Area Network with a limited range of ten meters or so.
Similar to Wide Area Network(WAN) or Local Area Network(LAN), there is the Personal Area Network (PAN), which came into existence with the evolution of Limited distance communication technologies such as Bluetooth, IrDA, UWB, Zigbee and a few others.
Now, in a scenario where all the computer peripherals are interconnected via Bluetooth wireless technology, the interconnected devices form a Personal Area Network(PAN), more commonly known as a Piconet. Technically, a Piconet is basically an ad-hoc network, comprising of multiple devices, in a master-slave configuration (1 master and up to 7 active slaves).
As a whole, the concept of Bluetooth PANs in home computing space has certainly given a ‘technology boost’ to lagging PC market.