Can I transfer photos via infrared?
QI went to the ‘Networking and Sharing Centre’ panel in Windows 10 to troubleshoot a problem, which I did easily enough. However, while I was there I noticed at the bottom left a link labelled Infrared. Curious, I clicked this and it opened a box with the same heading. This has a bunch of options that seem to suggest I can transfer files to other computers or from my digital camera. The latter in particular sounds interesting, because I currently use a USB lead to do this, which is a small hassle. So, how do I do it? Francis Mainwaring
AWe’re sorry to say that you almost certainly can’t.
Infrared ports are, if not quite extinct, then at the very least a seriously endangered species. While it’s possible that your computer is an older laptop or desktop that was factory fitted with an Infrared Data Association (or IRDA) port, it is exceedingly rare for any digital camera manufactured in the past decade or so to have one.
What you found in Windows is what’s known as a ‘legacy’ feature: something that was once useful but now exists purely because it always has. If you do happen to own another device that has an IRDA port — another ancient PC, perhaps — then you could use the Infrared options to set up a transfer of files between the two.
However, they’d need to be pretty close together and the two devices’ IRDA ports would also need a direct line of sight to each other, otherwise they won’t be able to communicate with each other. Even then, the transfer would be incredibly slow by modern standards.