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Bluetooth goes into "pocket server" from Toshiba

In the same way that Firewire connections languished unnoticed until Apple invented the iPod, a big (but very tiny!) Toshiba storage device might well make Bluetooth popular even with people who didn't think it was worth taking seriously

Toshiba has put a 5 gigabyte disk into a pocket device, attached Bluetooth wireless, and decided to offer it as a personal storage device.

As a clue to what they think it might be useful for, they point out that it will hold "almost 37 hours of MPEG-4 moving images or 1,000 pieces of music," but add that "it is small enough and light enough to slip into a shirt pocket."

The product was announced last week in Japan, and ignored by everybody except Thomas at geek.com, who pointed out that Bluetooth doesn't run very fast - certainly not at what people would normally regard as video speeds.

Of course, MPEG-4 is hugely compressed video, with the objective of having a system which can be displayed on cellphones. But even so, Toshiba clearly has other ideas in mind for this product, and its name, the "Bluetooth Pocket Server" suggests that it is looking towards a new age of mobile devices.

Today's pocket PCs and Palm devices have of the order of 16 megabytes to 64 megabytes of storage capacity, all in RAM or "flash" RAM. By comparison, a five gig disk is almost three orders of magnitude bigger.

The problem with most pocket devices is battery power; without making them impossibly big and heavy, Toshiba's new PocketPC device is about as large as users will tolerate; and most women want something half the size and half the weight - at least - if it is to fit into a fashionable handbag.

So the storage has to go into another unit: and Bluetooth is the answer.

"The pocket server will allow users to capture and save data as diverse as TV broadcasts, music files or map information and download them to a PC or PDA, allowing anytime access to stored data," says the press release.

"In business, stored presentation data can be transmitted to a BluetoothTM-enabled printer or projector without the need of an intermediary PCs," adds the announcement. "When large volumes of data do have to be transferred to a PC, an integrated USB port can be used to optimize the speed of the transaction."

Toshiba plans to position the BluetoothTM Pocket Server as an essential component in multi-product, wireless mobile AV networks and plans to ship in the next two months.