Of laptops and their IR ports

Improvolone

So my laptop (Dell Inspiron 9100) has an IR port. My TV and reciever have IR ports, and I love those things. However, I know exactly what to use their IR ports for.

What the hell can I use my laptops IR port for? I have a universal remote (Harmony 880), so I assume I have a few options.

Be them practical or silly, what the hell is this good for?

corcorigan

It's a little irrelevant, but I remember my old tv remote used to occasionally turn on a very old Apple machine that had an IR port. It's was quite funny.

The IR ports I've used on laptops only seem to be useful for very slowly transferring files from mobile phones....

Caustic

It can be used for transferring files and such. A lot of PDAs use IR to "beam" info back and forth, I thought they had kind of phased it out as a transportation media because of bluetooth but heh imagine that it's still on some laptops.

VoodooV

they're slow, short range, don't handle movement well.

The Inspiron line got rid of them a while back because they're considered "legacy" The latitudes still keep them around for a while, but I think even they're getting rid of them too.

I won't miss them any.

Peewi

I know that it can be used for file transfer to/from cell phones, but I don't know what else to use it for.

Doughnut

My inspiron 1520 came with an IR port and a small remote that slides in the the PCMCIA slot for storage, but other then that I can't think of a use for it.

ArcSyn

IR ports were made for wireless connectivity on the go. Small-form printers had IR ports and PDAs had IR ports you could use so you didn't have to carry around wires for your laptop. Now? You can use it as a universal remote or as Doughnut has it sometimes they use them for media PC purposes. Other than that an IR port is pretty useless with today's tech.

steeef

I remember my boss using one to print to an HP printer that also had an IR port. Interesting, but not that useful.

deadonthestreet

You could try to have a conversation with a game boy color.

VoodooV

steeef wrote: »

I remember my boss using one to print to an HP printer that also had an IR port. Interesting, but not that useful.

we had a few users who felt they just had to do that too. Wireless just for the sake of saying "ooo look at my wireless printer, aren't I cool?"

We always turned them off for security reasons. Of course, my boss would never let me lock up the BIOS settings with an admin password, so the few users who did know at least something about computers would just go into the bios and turn the IR ports back on.

sigh

The_Cyberchrist

I used my laptops' IR port once. When I set it down next to another laptop it informed me there was another computer nearby. Thats the best use I can think of, accidentaly lineing up your IR ports, and 'accidentaly' transfering hundreds of megs of useless data to someones laptop.

taliosfalcon

many years ago I used to play multiplayer doom with appletalk via IR ports, it was all fun and games until someone inevitably bumped one of the laptops and killed the connection