Bluetooth and WiFi are both wireless networking standards that provide connectivity via radio waves. The main difference: Bluetooth's primary use is to replace cables, while WiFi is largely used to provide wireless, high-speed access to the Internet or a local area network.

Bluetooth

First developed in 1994, Bluetooth is a low-power, short-range (30 feet) networking specification with moderately fast transmission speeds of 800 kilobits per second. Bluetooth provides a wireless, point-to-point, "personal area network" for PDAs, notebooks, printers, mobile phones, audio components, and other devices. The wireless technology can be used anywhere you have two or more devices that are Bluetooth enabled. For example, you could send files from a notebook to a printer without having to physically connect the two devices with a cable.

A few notebooks, such as the IBM ThinkPad T30, now include built-in Bluetooth connectivity. And $129 will buy you a Bluetooth card for expansion-slot Palm PDAs, allowing you to connect to printers, notebooks, mobile phones, and other devices without cables.

Despite the promises of Bluetooth, however, hardware makers have been slow to incorporate it into their products. Some experts believe it could be eight years before Bluetooth is commonly used. They attribute the technology's lagging adoption rate to poor usability and confusion about what Bluetooth is and does

WiFi

Short for Wireless Fidelity, WiFi is a user-friendly name for devices that have been certified by the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance to conform to the industry-standard wireless networking specification IEEE 802.11b. WiFi began appearing in products in late 1998. The standard currently provides access to Ethernet networks such as a corporate LAN or the Internet at super-fast speeds of up to 11 megabits per second.

Known as VoIP, IP Telephony, Internet telephony and Digital Phone, Voice over Internet Protocol is the medium of voice conversations over the internet. Through this, the voice data get transported by packet-switched network instead of traditional dedicated, circuit-switched voice transmission lines. The protocols used for it are referred as VoIP protocols.

WiFi connections can be made up to about 300 feet away from a "hot spot" (slang for a WiFi networking node). When your notebook or PDA has a WiFi networking card or built-in chip, you can surf the Internet at broadband speeds wirelessly. WiFi networking nodes are proliferating globally; many Starbucks locations, for instance, offer access to WiFi hot spots for a fee.