The wireless world is coming up faster than you realize. The equipment is getting cheaper and easier to set up. Microsoft announced it is going to manufacture home wireless networking equipment that will be cheap, secure, and ridiculously easy to set up. Wireless standards are settling down and devices are starting to flood the market.
This article is mostly about new support for Bluetooth in Windows XP, but it poses an interesting possibility that can be realized within the next couple of years. Imagine a computer that has no wires whatsoever except a power cable plugged into the wall. It’s almost possible now, and it will be trivially easy soon. Wireless keyboards and mice are readily available. A wireless connection to your broadband Internet access point is reasonably easy now, regardless of whether your Internet access is cable, DSL, or something else. Add some Bluetooth support into your next printer or scanner and you’ve gotten rid of just about all of the cables in back of your computer. (My guess is that we’ll be using speaker cables for a while to come, although wireless speakers are on the horizon too.)
