Another part of the issue is that Bluetooth technologies tend to use a lot of USB dongles/ports and those are a cause of a lot of issues. USB can be a royal pain in the ass. Sometimes it won’t recognize your iPod/Zune/Blackberry and sometimes it’ll have enough juice to charge your devices and sometimes it won’t. Who knows how many Bluetooth issues are actually USB issues or USB/Blackberry conflicts.
works for me ( on my Mac). My son, OTOH, still hasn’t found a cell phone with a decent quality interface. He can hear us just fine, but we can’t understand him if he is using his BT cell. Now he is almost always either walking or driving when he calls so background noise might be a factor. But I am not impressed with BT cells for that reason.
I thought my issues had to do with the crappy USB Bluetooth dongle that I bought for my PC (there doesn’t appear to be a high quality option, they’re all cheap & use the same barely-working driver). But then I got the Bluetooth scanner for the Mac, which has built in Bluetooth, and it sucks just as bad.
On the other hand, the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse work great on the Mac, at least until I use the scanner, at which point the mouse might as well be a brick.
I think that a lot of phones deliberately dissable the Bluetooth-computer connection. At least they did with Verizon when I was with them. For that phone, I did have to download some extra software to my computer. Verizon’s excuse for disabling it was phone security. I suppose that might be an issue if you are careless. For these phones, the Bluetooth headset was about all the Bluetooth was good for.
My current phone, a RAZR, required no software download at all. I could use it to update my address book on my computer and my phone. It will also update the calender. The problem is that since I don’t sync them often, I would end up with lots of duplicate listings and old numbers and e-mail addresses.
For me, Blue Tooth is a solution that’s still looking for a problem. I can sync my mobile device with my laptop via blue tooth, but, I’d rather hook up the little cord. I guess we could connect to our home printer via bluetooth but we have a wireless router that we use that works just fine. Bluetooth is just not that useful to me.
Wow, I actually have a good experience with Bluetooth.
I have my phone paired with the Bluetooth portion of my indash nav in the car. I have AT&T as my carrier, phone is a Motorola V557 and I’m pairing to a Pioneer AVIC D3 Bluetooth phone module.
It connects about 30 seconds after starting the car and I get clear sound and people have no problem hearing me, no echos or delays. I am more than thrilled with the performance. In fact, I once got a call just after getting in the car, before I got a pairing. I answered the phone manually, and shortly after, it paired and I started hearing it on the speakers. So, I just closed my phone and continued hands free.
Maybe part of the problem is the equipment used.
It must be the equipment. I’ve spent an hour with customer service with both Toyota and Palm before they finally agreed that Bluetooth on the Treo is incompatible with Bluetooth on the Rav4. so they’ll never be able to pair. Which was a big disappointment for my wife.
Ed
I have never had a problem with Bluetooth on any Mac (I own four).
My work Dell laptop, however, refuses to do anything remotely bluetoothy once it has been put to sleep. I have to reboot to get Bluetooth to work again.
[quote=“Bob55, post:16, topic:487931”]
feels weird talking into thin airQUOTE]
and I thought I was the only person on earth who was bothered by this!
I can put up with the dorky tech guy in my office whose ears look like Spock…but it drives me nuts to see him talking to the wall, to the window etc…
I need a focal point for my conversations.
When, say, 4 people in a meeting are using the speaker phone, everybody looks at the speaker, whether they are listening or talking… It just seems more natural…
Bluetooth works well on my Playstation 3 controllers, that’s been the extent of my experience with it. Never a hiccup.
Well, at my work Bluetooth has been quite a boon for drivers. You know how you’re not supposed to drive while using a cell phone? Well you’re not supposed to drive a BUS while using a cell phone even more so…BIG no-no. But this doesn’t stop drivers, and a tiny earpiece makes it easier to do covertly. FYI I NEVER do this, just an observation.
However everyone uses them in the Driver’s room area; its surreal. Its like a bunch of Borg Drones milling about with these things in their ears, mumbling stuff to the Collective that is their sister-in-law, a customer service rep, or shudder a phone sex line.
I use bluetooth for mobile devices only, such as syncing my Palm up with my Mac.
My mouse is a high-precision version that has a higher sampling and data rate than usual - too much for bluetooth or normal RF.
My keyboard is a special ergonomic design that didn’t come with bluetooth, but I’m kind of glad it didn’t
My laptop 10-key pad and mouse are wireless, but not bluetooh - the bluetooth versions were significantly more expensive than what I got.
But I think the key is that no computer technology can really take off until someone makes it exclusive. Just look at USB. Intel invented it four years before anyone ever heard of it. It only saturated the market (even on the PC side) after Apple made it the only option on Macs. Or look at the original DVD format vs Blu-Ray and HD. Rapid and widespread adoption only occurs when there’s no alternative.
A short distance wireless connection that lets electronic gadgets talk to each other and to computers would be a sure-fire success, and almost everybody would own multiple examples of it.
Bluetooth, though, doesn’t seem to have anything to do with that idea. Or more accurately, the 7 dongles and 7 other Bluetooth devices I have poured dozens of hours and two Bluetooth discussion forum memberships into don’t have anything to do with it.
If I could spend, say, $300 or $500 or so to make Bluetooth disappear from the marketplace, so that products I would otherwise want were not rendered worse than useless by this mess, I think I’d do it.
Personally I love bluetooth and wish I had more devices that used it. I have a speakerphone that clips on my visor that works awesome. No stupid ear bud for my cell phone. I also didn’t see it mentioned about the PS3 remote. I love being able to control the bluray without line of site. In fared is such a pain in the ass sometimes. I wish all remotes would use bluetooth. Now if I could just find a good universal remote that has both bluetooth and infrared.
I bought a bluetooth stereo headphone device so I could listen to mp3s from my phone. I had no problem syncing it with my phone. When I was indoors or in a vehicle, it was great - no problems.
The problem is that I walk around town a lot. Seems like every time I got to an open space outside, or a bluetooth enabled vehicle drove by, the headset would clip out and try to connect with whatever other device was nearby and I would have to turn it off and turn it back on again to sync back with my own phone.
Quite the pain in the patootie. I am no longer amused by this technology.
Don’t flatter yourselves, Mac obsessives - USB 2.0 (unlike the verrrrry slow 1.0) only dates from 2000, and hit me if I’m wrong, but the iPod was still solely using FireWire at that time? So much for saturating the market ‘even’ on the PC side, because I’d love to know how you do it without the PC side.