Digital cameras

Digital cameras
If you own a digital camera, you’ve probably spent a fair amount of time
reaching behind your PC to connect the USB cable required to download
the pictures from the camera to your PC. It’s a real pain. And if you head over
to your parents’ house and want to download the pictures for them, you’d
better have remembered that cable, or you’ll have to wait until you get home.
And then you’ve got to e-mail all those pictures to them, which can take forever,
even on a broadband connection. (And if your parents only have a
dialup modem, it’ll take them even longer to download that huge e-mail.)
A better solution is to zap the pictures to their PC while you’re there (or to
your own computer at home, without any behind-the-desk acrobatics) using
Bluetooth. Sony’s got a solution for you (at least if you live in Japan — Sony
hasn’t released this model outside its home market yet): the Sony DSC-FX77.
(And by the way, can we just ask — what’s with Sony’s product names? All
these numbers drive us crazy.) The DSC-FX77 is a 4-megapixel camera (so you
can take some really high-resolution shots that you can blow up into nearly
poster-sized prints), and if it’s anything like the other (non-Bluetooth) Sony
digital cameras that we’ve used, it’s gotta take some great pictures. You can
find this camera on Sony’s main Web page in Japan (www.sony.co.jp).
Because this product is only currently available in Japan — and because we
can’t read Japanese, either — we can’t offer you any setup tips. Because the
camera is Bluetooth based, however, setup is probably like with all other
Bluetooth-enabled devices . . . you might need to install a driver, and it works
within range of other Bluetooth devices.
If you’ve got a baby (or you’re a budding Scorsese) and are into digital camcorders,
Sony has several models that have Bluetooth connectivity built in.
This is great for sending still pictures over to your computer, but it might not
work all that great for sending long videos. We’d love to see 802.11 get put
into camcorders because the sheer size of video files means a long download
with a slower wireless link. These cameras can be found on Sony’s North
American Web page (in English, even!) at www.sony.com.
Keyboards and meeses (that’s plural
for mouse!)
Wireless keyboards and mice have been around for a while (Danny’s been
swearing by his Logitech wireless mouse for years and years), but they’ve been
a bit clunky. In order to get them working, you had to buy a pair of radio transceivers
to plug into your computer, and then you had to worry about interference
between your mouse and other devices in your home. With Bluetooth,
things get a lot easier. If your PC (or PDA for that matter) has Bluetooth built in,
you don’t need to buy any special adapters or transceivers — just put the batteries
in your keyboard and mouse and start working. (You probably won’t
even need to install any special software or drivers on your PC to make this
work.) Check out the Bluetooth keyboard from the Korean company Bluelogic
(www.bluelogic.co.kr) — it’s a very cool device that should be available by
the time you read this (it was announced but not yet being shipped as we
wrote).
If your PC is not already Bluetooth equipped, you might consider buying
Microsoft’s Wireless Optical Desktop (www.microsoft.com/hardware/
keyboard/wodbt_info.asp; about $160). This system includes both a
full-function wireless keyboard (one of those cool Microsoft models with
a ton of extra buttons for special functions such as audio volume, MP3 fast
forward/rewind, and special keys for Microsoft Office programs), a wireless
optical mouse (no mouse ball to clean — as an aside, if you haven’t used an
optical mouse yet, you really need to try one!), and a Bluetooth adapter that
plugs into one of your PC’s USB ports. This adapter turns your PC into a
Bluetooth PC. In other words, it can be used with any Bluetooth device, not
just with the keyboard and mouse that come in the box with it. So this kit is a
great way to unwire your mouse and keyboard and get a Bluetooth PC, all in
one fell swoop.
The Wireless Optical Desktop is really easy to set up. You just need to plug
the receiver into a USB port on the back of your computer and install the keyboard
and mouse driver software. (This isn’t really even a Bluetooth requirement,
but rather, it allows you to use all the special buttons on the keyboard
and extra mouse buttons on the mouse.) You do, however, have to have an
up-to-date version of Windows XP (which you can update by using XP’s builtin
software update program) or a Macintosh with the latest version of OS X.