In the War on Wires, the radio technology known as bluetooth has won itself a small territory. Intended for short-range personal devices, bluetooth enables connections between such things as a mobile phone and a computer, between a headset and a mobile phone, between a printer and a computer. If you have bluetooth capability, see if it can make your life easier.
Bluetooth is a radio-based wireless connection technology – it was hyped to be the only way all the devices in your home or office would need to talk to each other. As usual, reality has fallen short of the hype, and bluetooth has taken a long time to spread enough to be usable. Nonetheless, bluetooth is commonly available in mobile phones, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and laptops. It is a low-powered signal, so generally good for devices very close to each other, say less than 10m. Stronger bluetooth signals are possible with a stated 100m range, but both ends will need this boosted strength.
For computers that have no built-in bluetooth capability, you can buy adapters or USB “dongles” that plug in and provide the capability. Although allegedly plug-and-play, bluetooth may have issues with the particular device and its version of bluetooth (now up to version 2). For example, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 includes bluetooth drivers, but some USB bluetooth dongles disagree with them and it takes a bit of fiddling to replace them with the manufacturer's own drivers. All the same, technical help is readily available on the internet if not in the manufacturer's supplied information.
Bluetooth only provides the connection between devices, so it is not concerned with what you can do or how you actually do things. Devices do generally need to be “paired” ie. you have to introduce them to each other and approve the connection – unless you set the bluetooth connectivity to accept connections from anything anytime, which may not be a good idea. This may involve a password. For example, after adding a USB bluetooth dongle to a Windows computer and completing the installation configuration, you may want to connect a bluetooth headset (earpiece and microphone like you see the people at airports wearing all the time!) so that you can wander around while you chat via Skype. You will need to start the Wizard that scans for new devices, turn on the headset, and follow the configuration prompts which include the headset's built-in hardware password. This sounds awkward and a pain, and it is, but luckily you only have to do it once. Be sure to save that headset documentation with the password though.
Bluetooth as a technology has taken a while to get off the ground, but seems to be gaining in popularity now. Most mobile phones include it so that you can synchronise with other phones, or swap data, or download to a computer. Many PDAs include it for the same purposes. And if not already built in to new laptops, it is usually an optional extra you can add at small cost. For convenience, bluetooth beats infra-red hands down (no line-of-sight required), and its low power helps with privacy and protection as the signal cannot travel far. And who wants to hunt for a fiddly wire to plug in to the phone or PDA or camera and then plug it into the computer when you can do the whole thing wirelessly? As they say, if you have it – use it!
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