Leave it to Sony to toss everything that’s industry standard out the window and go its own direction.  With the so far relative success of Blu-Ray, there may be hope for the company’s wireless TransferJet technology but it has a huge downside.

Sony is a stalwart believer in making everything proprietary, namely its Memory Stick memory cards which only work with Sony devices and of course, audio codecs which turned out to be a miserable failure, only having recently been “forced” to “switch”  to MP3 downloads.

It has had more failures than successes but that hasn’t taught the company anything.  Going against Wireless USB (W-USB) and BlueTooth 3.0 will be TransferJet, a Sony-only wireless transfer technology.

According to Engadget, there are enough pros and cons on both sides but in my opinion, Sony has the short end of the stick.  TransferJet only has a range of three centimeters (or about one inch) while W-USB and BlueTooth 3.0 operate within a range of three meters (or 9 feet).  Despite having a theoretical maximum transfer speed of 560Mbps, TransferJet is no better than being tethered by a cord.

W-USB and BlueTooth 3.0 both report transfer speeds of 480Mbps.  This is a real hard choice, do you want to have to be within an inch or within a 9 foot radius, don’t even answer an inch, that’s the wrong answer.

Of course, Sony is playing the “usability” card since TransferJet will automatically update any devices with outdated files when it comes into range whereas BlueTooth 3.0 and W-USB require user interaction but that’s not really a problem, I’d rather not automatically update everything.

It’s also a possibility that TransferJet may include wireless charging capabilities as well which could explain the close proximity required but, honestly, three centimeters.

My “spidey” senses are tingling and it is telling me that in two years, TransferJet will be yet another miserable failure that Sony can cross of its playbook.  Also, prepare yourself for tons of errors and poorly written applications just like SonicStage.

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Entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 10:39 am under Technology, Uncategorized.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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