infrared - is it useful ?

[John Redthorn]

Question : What good is infrared . does it have a use ?

As i see it infrared is basically a line of site thing . So if you need
to have the transmitter pointed at the receiver then what good is it ?

I have never used it on a pc . Or for that matter have never seen one .
If you had a mouse that used it would you not have to have a transmitter
pointing at the receiver ?
This would mean a wire on the mouse going to a transmitter that is then
pointed at the receiver . Seems to me that as long as you have a wired
mouse you might as well plug it in the pc .

the reason i ask is that I have a old laptop with an infrared on the
back . this seems like a useless object to me .

[Andrew Smallshaw]

Post by John Redthorn
to have the transmitter pointed at the receiver then what good is it ?
I have never used it on a pc . Or for that matter have never seen one .
If you had a mouse that used it would you not have to have a transmitter
pointing at the receiver ?
This would mean a wire on the mouse going to a transmitter that is then
pointed at the receiver . Seems to me that as long as you have a wired
mouse you might as well plug it in the pc .
the reason i ask is that I have a old laptop with an infrared on the
back . this seems like a useless object to me .

IRDA ports are useful enough though mostly for portable equipment.
The only time I've ever used is was between an Apple Newton and a
printer where it made things a lot more convenient. With superportable
printers the cable can take up a lot of space: I have an original
Pentax Pocketjet and the cable is almost as big as the printer.
That is an (expensive) proprietary cable too so it is potentially
one more thing to risk losing when out and about.

[Ron Hinds]

Post by John Redthorn
Question : What good is infrared . does it have a use ?
As i see it infrared is basically a line of site thing . So if you need to
have the transmitter pointed at the receiver then what good is it ?
I have never used it on a pc . Or for that matter have never seen one . If
you had a mouse that used it would you not have to have a transmitter
pointing at the receiver ?
This would mean a wire on the mouse going to a transmitter that is then
pointed at the receiver . Seems to me that as long as you have a wired
mouse you might as well plug it in the pc .
the reason i ask is that I have a old laptop with an infrared on the back
. this seems like a useless object to me .

I had a laptop like that, too. The only use I ever found for the IR port was
to connect to a cell phone I had that used IR, too. Cell phones that had
that feature could swap numbers if you pointed them at each other. Software
that came with the cell phone allowed me to sync the phone numbers with a
proprietary PC app or Outlook.