4. Bluetooth

Bluetooth continues to slouch toward maturity... at least in the US market. Although there were no Bluetooth related announcements from the "gang of four", i.e. Linksys, NETGEAR, D-Link, and SMC, there were plenty of Bluetooth products to be found. Most, however, were located in OEM/ODM vendor booths in the Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Korea, and other off-shore pavilions. There you could find plenty of Bluetooth headsets, Bluetooth USB "dongles", and inexpensive Bluetooth/Ethernet bridges / Access Points from vendors such as Abe, Flex-P, BLUETAKE, ATO-technology, and others. Most were Class 2 (10M) products, but I also found a few Class 1 (100M) dongles, too.

Lest you think you have to hop a plane to get your hands on a Bluetooth USB dongle, I found Amazing Technology's BlueGear Wireless Connectivity kit in the Palm Partner area. The kit includes two adapters, cables, and software and is available lots of places for about $100. IOGEAR was also showing their recently-introduced Bluetooth to USB Adapter ($53, Now). It supports USB 1.1 and Bluetooth 1.1 specs and is a Class 1 device.

The main reason I mention this, is that what usually happens when you see a proliferation of a product type in these vendors' booths, you can be relatively certain that the product will flood the market in the coming year. I'm particularly encouraged by the appearance of so many Bluetooth Access Points, which should drive down the cost from the $500 that Pico gets for their PicoBlue AP, or the $600 that Possio has commanded for their