are IR ports archaic now?

hi. my old laptops used to have these IR port things. i never used them. i don't even know what they are for, but i heard remote controls?

do most companies still make laptops with IR ports?

also if i were to have a remote control, would it have to be in LINE OF SIGHT of the IR port? thanks.

 

IR is the same stuff your typical TV remote uses. You do have to have line of site. You can still find IR ports on some systems. They are not outdated but there is better technology. Like Bluetooth. Bluetooth was originally designed to replace IR and RF technology in remotes and connectivity among small electronic devices. It didn't pick up as fast as it was thought due to price. Now a days, you can find more bluetooth stuff. These items do not need line of site and work at far greater distances the RF. Try Wikipedia or howstuffworks.com to explain how it works.

 

IR was used for remote controls, transfers with some mobile devices (phones, PDAs), and things of that nature. It required line of sight and was tortuously slow. It's been almost totally replaced by Bluetooth - so much so that when Lenovo removed the RF port from the T series with the T61, almost nobody noticed.

 

Well, the only use I've seen for IR ports is for media remote controls like the ones that Dell sells or the ones that come with HP pavilion notebooks to control Windows Media Player or QuickPlay.

 

Isn't one of the main benefits of IR security? Unless someone wants to dive in front of your port with some kind of intercept device, I doubt it could be compromised any more than a wired line could.

 

if you look at it that way, then yes, IR is secure. Bluetooth is a higher security then your normal 802.11x wireless though. Bluetooth has a shared key that must be entered in at both times and then synced... etc... it is extremely secure when it comes to wireless but yes, since it is broadcasted omnidirectional, it can be hacked to some point.

 

probably cheaper too?

 

Yes. Light is too slow these days.

 

you can buy IR recievers for your laptop all over the place for virtually nothing.

 

IR is just too specialized. It's great for remotes and.......... well remotes. Bluetooth works for remotes, mice, keyboards, Phone as data connection hacks, headphones, and speakers.

 

In a word, yes, infrared ports are archaic on computers. Infrared remotes are still used, just like TV remotes, but that's about it. Bluetooth is the new standard for everything else. My new Dell came with an IR port for the purpose of using an IR remote, but it isn't even enabled in the BIOS by default. Now that I found out about it, though, my curiousity is piqued, so I'll have to test it .

And the fact is, it is super-slow. SUPER-slow. Before I got this laptop, the only way I could upload or download items to my cell phone was through the infrared connection on my ancient ThinkPad 760XL. As an example, I transferred a 1 MB song I wanted onto my phone to a floppy disk from my desktop, then put the floppy disk in the ThinkPad and transferred the file directly from the floppy to the phone via Infrared. The Infrared, not the floppy disk, was the limiting factor. By far. It took 15 minutes to transfer 1 MB via infrared - by comparison that takes about 1.5 minutes on a good floppy disk. Just incredibly slow. Bluetooth isn't exactly blazing - about 75 KB per second if I remember - but at least it beats floppy disks.

That's why the security benefits of infrared have not been sufficient to make it mainstream . I can just imagine - "I'll be to supper soon Mom, I only have 200 hours left until all my music is transferred!"

 

thank you!

 

IR is also line of sight, very uni-directional, which can be both an advantage and a disadvantage.

 

Is there any software out there that could use the IR port to generate thermal images? That would be kind of neat - though only a novelty

 

My 8 year old Laserjet 2100 HP Printer has an IR port right in the front. My sister has a Fujitsu laptop with an IR port in the back. Very useful, she just moves in range of the ir port, xp installs the drivers and it prints within seconds.

 

The old ThinkPad at work used to detect phones and PDAs that were too close all the time.