Спереводом ! part i it’s difficult to remember a time when we lived without mobile phones, sms text messaging, and email. in those far-off days of landlines and snail mail, who could possibly have predicted that these technologies would become such an integral part of our daily lives. text messaging especially was never predicted to take off in the way it has, becoming the norm in instant communication for everyone from primary school children to executives. in the same way, as a new generation of portable devices is emerging, the implications for how and where we work and play are still taking shape. mobile devices will probably never entirely replace the wired systems that define our workplaces, but they will offer a range of new working possibilities, allowing people the freedom to work in ways better suited to their needs. a range of products and services is now available to enable users to manage emails, access databases, or edit documents when they are on the move. a simple calculation of the benefits this provides can be quite surprising. if each employee spends a total of ten hours a week travelling, this represents millions of pounds a year in lost productivity. the new technology also means that the component parts of a business can work together in real time. whereas staff on move have traditionally had to wait for their return to the office in order to type up notes or update their records, they can now enter information directly into the system from any location. likewise, being able to access information on the move, employees can offer a more complete service to clients. the other advantage of the current available technologies is the flexibility to adapt the devices which employees use to their particular role in an organization. some might need laptops to manage larger documents, others might use smaller hand-held devices for quick emails and product tracking purposes, but all the devices can feed into the same system in different ways. currently the three main wireless technologies are bluetooth, gprs and wifi. each technology has different capabilities and particular strengths and weakness part ii in situations where secure short-range connections between devices such as personal computers and mobile phones are required, bluetooth technology provides an ideal cost-effective service. bluetooth, which typically has a range of about ten meters, works well in small office space and provides flexibility for business where mobile employees come into an office to download information from their laptop computers or to access databases. the main disadvantage of bluetooth is that data transfer is relatively slow at 1 mb per second. if speed of data transfer is important, then wifi , short for wireless fidelity, is vastly superior to bluetooth. although it works over a relatively short range, it can transmit data at up to 54 mb per second. it is most useful for individuals who need to work remotely, for instance while travelling. to do this, users have to locate a ‘hotspot’ near to where they happen to be, for example in a café or a public library. hotspots operate over a range of 100 metres and allow access by 256 users at any one time. gprs, general packet radio service, is a technology related to mobile phones which allows transmission of emails and small amounts of data as well as high-speed access to the internet. it is ideal for reliable communication as well as internet browsing, but not suitable for full mobile working in the way that wifi is, because of restricted amounts of data that can be transmitted at any one time. two other important aspects of the new technologies which need to be considered are security and cost. currently, because it works within a limited environment, bluetooth is more secure than wifi or gprs, but in terms of cost, gprs is relatively cheap with mobile phones networks offering a range of value-for-money packages. bluetooth technology is built into the latest versions of mobile phones and other devices, but an adapter which adds bluetooth capability to a device costs only about £ 50. to set up a wifi hotspot can cost from £ 120 to £500, but an individual network card allowing users access at existing hotspots costs between £ 40 and £ 60. with this range of technologies competing for users and others currently being developed, it is fascinating to speculate where this communications revolution will lead. no one expects it to end. the companies developing the technologies would like to see everybody connecting to the internet via a hotspot in their local fast-food restaurant, or accessing their emails on high-speed trains via their laptop. in reality, however, it is the users, not the developers of technology, who will finally decide which ideas to take off and which remain the pipe-dreams of their inventors.