Most of the time, when people talk about wireless networks, they’re # W1 talking about wireless local area networks (LANs). LANs, as the name implies, are local, which means that they don’t cover a wide area (like a town or a city block). Wide area networks (WANs), like the Internet, do that bigger job. For the most part, you can think of a LAN as something that’s designed to cover your entire house (and maybe surrounding areas, such as the back patio).
Another kind of wireless network is being developed and promoted by wireless equipment manufacturers. The personal area network (PAN) is designed to cover just a few yards of space and not a whole house (or office or factory floor or whatever). PANs are typically designed to connect personal devices (cell phones, laptop computers, handheld computers, and personal digital assistants) and also as a technology for connecting peripheral devices to these personal electronics. For example, you could use a wireless PAN technology to connect a mouse and a keyboard to your computer without any cables under the desk for your beagle to trip over.
The difference between LANs and PANs isn’t clear cut. Some devices may be able to establish network connections by using either LAN or PAN technologies. The bottom-line distinction between LANs and PANs is this: If something connects to a computer by a network cable, its wireless connection is usually a LAN; if it connects by a local cable (such as USB), its wireless connection is usually a PAN.
In this topic, we discuss the most prominent wireless PAN technology: Bluetooth, which we introduce in next topic. The Bluetooth technology has been in development for years and years. We first wrote about it in our first edition of Smart Homes.For a while, it seemed that Bluetooth might end up in the historical dustbin of wireless networking — a great idea that never panned out — but these days Bluetooth seems to be everywhere. Watch a few TV cell phone ads and you hear the term — or check out the ads for new Lexus, Toyota, BMW, or Acura cars, which have Bluetooth built right in for hands-free cell phone operation.
The most common use of Bluetooth these days is connecting mobile phones to hands-free systems. You’ve probably also seen an even more popular example of Bluetooth in action: the cool cordless Bluetooth headsets that let you leave your phone in your pocket while making a call. Now you can finally talk on the cell phone and use both hands to gesticulate!
Discovering Bluetooth Basics
Let’s get the biggest question out of the way first: What the heck is up with that name? Well, it has nothing to do with what happens when you chew on your pen a bit too hard during a stressful meeting. Nor does it have anything to do with blueberry pie, blueberry toaster pastries, or any other blue food. Bluetooth — www.bluetooth.com is the Web site for the industry group — is named after Harald Blatand (Bluetooth), king of Denmark from A.D. 940 to 981, who was responsible for uniting Denmark and Norway. (We’re a little rusty on our medieval Scandinavian history, so if we’re wrong about that, blame our high school history teachers. If you’re a Dane or a Norwegian, feel free to e-mail us with the story!) The idea here is that Bluetooth can unite things that were previously un-unitable.
The big cell phone (and other telecommunications equipment) manufacturer Ericsson was the first company to promote the technology (back in the 1990s, as we mention earlier), and other cell phone companies joined in with Ericsson to come up with an industry de facto standard for the technology. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) — the folks who created the 802.11 standards that we talk about throughout this topic — have since become involved with the technology under the auspices of a committee named 802.15.
The initial IEEE standard for PANs, 802.15.1, was adapted from the Bluetooth specification and is fully compatible with Bluetooth 1.1, the most common variant of Bluetooth. (There are 1.2, 2.0 + EDR, and now 2.1 + EDR versions of the technology, as discussed in next topic. They’re compatible with Bluetooth 1.1 and add some additional features and performance.)
If you’re looking for a few facts and figures about Bluetooth, you’ve come to the right topic. Here are some of the most important things to remember about Bluetooth:
Bluetooth operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency spectrum. It uses the same general chunk of the airwaves as do 802.11g and 802.11n. (This means that interference between the two technologies is indeed a possibility, though 802.11n draft 2.0 is designed to sense Bluetooth transmissions and switch to different channels so they don’t interfere.)
The Bluetooth specification allows a maximum data connection speed of 723 Kbps. A few of the most recent Bluetooth specifications can go much faster (2.1 Mbps for Bluetooth 2.0 and 3.0 Mbps for Bluetooth 2.1, with a proposed Bluetooth 3.0 that can go up to 480 Mbps), but many Bluetooth devices still use the slower speed specification — and Bluetooth 3.0 won’t exist for a few more years. Compare this with the 248 Mbps of 802.11n. Bluetooth is much slower than wireless LAN technologies for now.
Bluetooth uses much lower power levels than do wireless LAN technologies (802.11). Thus, Bluetooth devices have a much smaller effect, power-wise, than 802.11 devices. This is a huge deal for some of the small electronic devices because Bluetooth eats up a whole lot less battery life than 802.11 systems. The proposed Wibree specification of Bluetooth will use even less power than the current version; it’s designed to be used in wireless-enabled watches and will increase the battery life of your cell phone Bluetooth headset five times what it is today.
Because Bluetooth uses a lower power level than 802.11, it can’t beam its radio waves as far as 802.11 does. Thus, the range of Bluetooth is considerably less than that of a wireless LAN. Theoretically, you can get up to 100 meters (these are called Class 1 devices), but most Bluetooth systems use less than the maximum allowable power ratings, and you typically see ranges of 30 feet or less with most Bluetooth gear — which means that you can reach across the room (or into the next room), but not all the way across the house.
Bluetooth uses a peer-to-peer networking model. This means that you don’t have to connect devices back through a central network hub like an access point (AP). Devices can connect directly to each other using Bluetooth’s wireless link. The Bluetooth networking process is highly automated; Bluetooth devices actively seek out other Bluetooth devices to see whether they can connect and share information.
Bluetooth doesn’t require line of sight between any connected devices. Bluetooth uses radio signals that can pass through walls, doors, furniture, and other objects. So you don’t need to have a direct line of sight like you do with infrared systems.
Bluetooth can also connect multiple devices in a point-to-multipoint fashion. One master device (often a laptop computer or a PDA) can connect with as many as seven slave devices simultaneously in this manner. (Slave devices are usually things such as keyboards and printers.)
The really big deal you should take away from this list is that Bluetooth is designed to be a low-power (and low-priced!) technology for portable and mobile devices. Bluetooth (do they call it Bleutooth in France?) isn’t designed to replace a wireless LAN. It’s designed to be cheaply built into devices to allow quick and easy connections.
Some of the PAN applications that Bluetooth has been designed to perform include
Cable replacement: Peripheral devices that use cables today — keyboards, mice, cell phone headsets, and the like — can now cut that cord and use Bluetooth links instead.
Synchronization: Many people have important information (such as address books, phone number lists, and calendars) on multiple devices (such as PCs, PDAs, and cell phones), and keeping this information synchronized (up-to-date and identical on each device) can be a real pain. Bluetooth (when combined with synchronization software) allows these devices to wirelessly and automatically talk with each other and keep up-to-date.
Simple file sharing: If you’ve ever been at a meeting with a group of technology geeks (we go to these meetings all the time, but then, we’re geeks ourselves), you may have noticed these folks pulling out their Windows Mobile and Palm PDAs and doing all sorts of contortions with them. What they’re doing is exchanging files (usually electronic business cards) via the built-in infrared (IR) system found on Palms. This system is awkward because you need to have the Palms literally inches apart with the IR sensors lined up. Bluetooth, because it uses radio waves, has a much greater range, which doesn’t require direct IR alignment — and is much faster to boot.
Look for even more cool applications in the future. For example, Bluetooth could be used to connect an electronic wallet (on your cell phone) to an electronic kiosk. For example, a soda machine could be Bluetooth enabled, and if you wanted a soda, you wouldn’t need to spend ten minutes trying to feed your last, raggedy dollar bill into the machine. You would just press a button on your PDA or cell phone, and it would send a buck from your electronic wallet to the machine and dispense your soda.
Another common future application may be customized information for a particular area. Ever go to one of those huge conferences held in places like Las Vegas? The booth numbers tend to go from 0 to 20,000, and the convention floor is about the size of 50 football fields — in other words, it’s difficult to find your way around. With Bluetooth, you can simply walk by an info kiosk and have a floor map and exhibitor display downloaded to your phone. We’re hoping that this feature is in place next time we go to the Consumer Electronics Show; we hate being late for appointments because we’re spending an hour searching for a booth.
Bluetooth Mobile Phones
The first place where Bluetooth technology is taking off is in the cell phone world. This statement probably shouldn’t be a surprise because Sony Ericsson, a huge cell phone maker, was the initial proponent of the technology, and other huge cell phone companies, such as Nokia, are also proponents.
Today just about every new phone being announced (except for the cheap-o ones) included Bluetooth technology. Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Siemens, among others, are all selling Bluetooth-enabled phones. The adoption of the technology has been spectacular. A few years ago, Bluetooth was a rarity; now it’s a standard.
You can do many things with Bluetooth in a cell phone, but the five most common applications are
Eliminate cables: Many people use headsets with their cell phones. It’s much easier to hear with an earpiece in your ear than it is to hold one of today’s miniscule cell phones up to your ear — and much more convenient. The wire running up your torso, around your arm, and along the side of your head into your ear is a real pain, though. (Some people go to great lengths to keep from being tangled up in this wire — check out the jackets at www.scottevest.com.) A better solution is to connect your headset wirelessly — using Bluetooth, of course. Literally dozens of Bluetooth headsets are on the market, from specialized headset manufacturers such as Plantronics (www.plantronics.com) and Jabra (www.jabra.com), as well as from the cell phone manufacturers themselves.
Synchronize phone books: Lots of us keep a phone book on our PC or PDA — and most of us who do have been utterly frustrated by the difficulty we face when we try to get these phone books onto our cell phones. If you can do it at all, you end up buying some special cable and software and then you still have to manually correct some of the entries. But with Bluetooth on your cell phone and PC or PDA, the process can be automatic.
Get pictures off your camera phone: Many new cell phones are camera phones with a built-in digital camera. The cell phone companies promote this concept because they can charge customers for multimedia messaging services (MMS) and allow people to send pictures to other cell phone customers. But if your PC has Bluetooth capabilities, you can use Bluetooth to send the picture you just snapped to your PC’s hard drive (or even use Bluetooth to transfer the file directly to a buddy’s cell phone when he or she is within range — for free!).
Go hands-free in the car: Face it — driving with a cell phone in your hands isn’t safe. Using a headset is better, but the best choice (other than not using your phone while driving) is to use a completely hands-free system, which uses a microphone and the speakers from your car audio system. This used to take a costly installation process and meant having someone rip into the wiring and interior of your car. If you bought a new phone, you probably needed to have the old hands-free gear ripped out and a new one installed. No more — Bluetooth cars are here, and they let you use any Bluetooth-enabled cell phone to go hands-free. Just set the phone in the glove box or dashboard cubbyhole and don’t touch it again. Keep your hands and eyes on the road!
If your current car isn’t outfitted with Bluetooth, don’t despair. Dozens of Bluetooth retrofit kits are available on the market — ranging from simple speaker/microphone devices that plug into your 12-volt power source (the lighter, in other words) to custom-installed, fully integrated systems that can even use your car’s steering wheel controls.
Get your laptop on the Internet while on the road: We think that the best way to connect your laptop to the Internet when you’re out of the house is to find an 802.11 hot spot,but sometimes you’re just not near a hot spot. Well, worry no more because if you have a cell phone and laptop with Bluetooth, you can use your cell phone as a wireless modem to connect to the Internet. With most cell phone services, you can establish a low-speed, dial-up Internet connection for some basic stuff (such as getting e-mail or reading text-heavy Web pages). If your cell phone system (and plan) includes a high-speed option (one of the 2.5 or 3G systems we talk about in next topic), you can get online at speeds rivaling (although not yet equaling) broadband connections such as DSL — all without wires!
Some cell phones have Bluetooth capabilities but have been artificially limited by the cell phone companies. For example, some Bluetooth phones have had their software configured by your cell phone company in such a way that you can’t use the phone as a modem for your laptop, as described in the preceding bullet. There’s no easy way to know this up front — but it’s a good reason to read the reviews in sources such as CNET (www.cnet.com) before taking a leap.
Bluetooth Smartphones and PDAs
In addition to cell phones, the other category of device that’s seeing a great deal of action in the Bluetooth arena is the PDA category. The term PDA (personal digital assistant) encompasses a wide range of handheld computing devices — and therefore, PDAs are also often referred to as handhelds.
The most common types of PDAs are
PDAs that use the ACCESS Garnet operating system (OS): These PDAs run the Garnet operating system (formerly Palm OS) — which is an older but still useful and user-friendly OS. You can find Palm PDAs on Palm Computing’s Web site (www.palm.com) and also by searching the Web site of ACCESS (www.access-company.com), the spin off that develops the OS.
Handhelds that use the Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system:
Windows Mobile handhelds are typically (though not always) a bit more expensive and faster than ACCESS OS PDAs. The major manufacturers of Windows Mobile systems include Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com), Toshiba (www.toshiba.com), and Samsung (www.Samsung.com) — even Palm makes a Windows Mobile version of its smartphone. In many ways, down to the user interface, Windows Mobile models tend to mirror Windows-based desktop and laptop computers in a smaller, shrunken-down form.
Smartphones: As we mention earlier in this topic, in the section "Discovering Bluetooth Basics," the line between PDAs and cell phones becomes more blurry with each passing day, and in fact smartphones, which combine a PDA and a cell phone in one device, are taking over the PDA world. Companies such as Palm are building cell phones and PDAs in one (the famous Treo phones), and other companies such as Samsung (www.samsung.com) sell Windows Mobile-based combos. Some smartphone devices use entirely different operating systems (such as Symbian, Blackberry, or even the open-source Linux operating system used on many business server computers). Even Apple is in the smart-phone business with the release of the Apple iPhone. This multimedia mobile phone device has not only Bluetooth but also Wi-Fi and EDGE built into it. The iPhone uses an optimized version of the OS X operating system. This phone generated so much hype that even though it’s less than 1 percent of the smartphone market — which is less than a half percent of the total cell phone market — we have to mention it here because it’s just too cool to leave out.
Despite the variations among the PDA world, there’s also a commonality — PDAs work much better as connected devices that can talk to computers and other PDAs. And, because PDAs and cell phones are increasingly converging, or taking on the same functionality, any of the applications we discuss in the preceding section may come into play with a PDA.
In particular, the synchronization application we discuss in the preceding section is especially important for PDAs because they tend to be mobile, on-the-road-again (thanks to Willie Nelson) extensions of a user’s main PC. Most PDAs now require either a docking cradle (a device you physically set the PDA in, which is connected via a cable to the PC), or at least a USB or another cable to synchronize contacts, calendars, and the like with the PC. With Bluetooth, you just need to have your PDA in the same room as the PC, with no physical connection. You can even set up your PDA to automatically synchronize when it’s within range of the PC.
Accordingly, we’ve begun to see Bluetooth functionality built into an increasing number of PDAs. For example, the newest Palm model, the Tungsten E2, includes a built-in Bluetooth system, as does the Nokia N800 Internet tablet (a handheld internet browsing device for when you just can’t be bothered to turn on that computer).
You can also buy some cool Bluetooth accessories for handhelds. One big issue with handhelds is the process of entering data into them. Most either have a tiny keyboard (a thumb keyboard, really, which is too small for using all your fingers and touch typing) or use a handwriting system, where you use a stylus and write in not-quite-plain English on the screen. Both systems can work well if you spend the time required to master them, but neither is optimal, especially if you want to do some serious data entry — like writing a topic! In that case, you really need a keyboard. Check out the Freedom Input Bluetooth keyboards (www.freedominput.com). These devices, available for PDAs, Windows Mobile devices, and smartphones, are compact (some even fold up) but give you a nearly full-size typing area.
If you already own a PDA and it doesn’t have Bluetooth built in, what can you do? Do you really have to go and replace that old PDA with a new model? Maybe not. Several manufacturers are selling add-on cards for existing PDAs that enable Bluetooth communications. For example, Socket Communications (www.socketcom.com) sells Compact Flash (CF) Bluetooth cards for Windows Mobile PDAs. Speaking more generally, most PDAs and smartphones have a memory card slot — SD, Compact Flash, or memory stick — that is most often used to expand the amount of memory in the PDA but can be used for other purposes. You can find Bluetooth cards in these memory card formats. With the increasing number of devices already enabled with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, it will be harder and harder to find these memory card format wireless adapters in the near future.
Getting a Bluetooth card installed and set up on your PDA is easy. The first thing you may have to do is to install some Bluetooth software on your handheld. If this step is required, you simply put the software CD in your PC and follow the onscreen instructions, which guide you through the process of setting up the software. After the software is on your PC, it should be automatically uploaded to your PDA the next time you sync it (using your cable or cradle). After the software is on your PDA, just slide the Bluetooth card into the PDA. The PDA recognizes it, and then may guide you through a quick setup wizard-type program. (Or it may not — this process is so automated that you may not notice anything happening.) That’s it — you’re Bluetooth-ed!
After you get Bluetooth hardware and software on your PDA, you’re ready to go. By its nature, Bluetooth is constantly on the lookout for other Bluetooth devices. When it finds something else (such as your Bluetooth-equipped PC or a Bluetooth printer) that can "talk" Bluetooth, the two devices communicate and inform each other of their capabilities. If there’s a match (such as you have a document to print and a nearby printer has Bluetooth), a dialog box pops up on your screen through which you can do your thing. Pairing Bluetooth devices is usually easy. In some cases (such as syncing mobile phone address books with your PC), you need to finesse some software on one side or the other. With a Bluetooth headset for your cell phone, for example, you tell your phone to find the device. Then you enter a four-digit code into your phone so it knows to talk to only that headset and the headset knows it’s dedicated to only that phone. Although we find that pairing Bluetooth is pretty simple, it’s always wise to consult the owner’s manual and the Web sites of the software and hardware companies involved.
Check out the section "Understanding Pairing and Discovery," at the end of this topic, for more details on making Bluetooth connections.
Other Bluetooth Devices
Cell phones and PDAs aren’t the only devices that can use Bluetooth. In fact, the value of Bluetooth would be considerably lessened if they were. It’s the network effect — the value (to the user) of a networked device that increases exponentially as the number of networked devices increases. To use a common analogy, think about fax machines (if you can remember them — we hardly ever use ours any more). The first guy with a fax machine found it pretty useless, at least until the second person got hers. As more and more folks got faxes, the fax machine became more useful to each one of them simply because they had many more people to send faxes to (or receive them from).
Bluetooth is the same. Just connecting your PDA to your cell phone is kind of cool, in a geek-chic kinda way, but it doesn’t set the world on its ear. But when you start considering wireless headsets, printers, PCs, keyboards, and even global positioning system (GPS) receivers — check out Telenav (www.telenav.com) GPS navigation software and receivers from GlobalSat (www.globalsat.com) — the value of Bluetooth becomes much clearer. In this section, we discuss some of these other Bluetooth devices.
Printers
We talk about connecting printers to your wireless LAN in next topic, but what if you want to access your printer from all the portable devices that don’t have wireless LAN connections built into them? Or, if you don’t have your printer connected to the wireless LAN, what do you do when you want to quickly print a document that’s on your laptop? Well, why not use Bluetooth?
You can get Bluetooth onto your printer in two ways:
Buy a printer with built-in Bluetooth. This item is relatively rare as we write, and it looks as though Wi-Fi enabled printers will replace these completely over time. An example comes from HP (www.hp.com), with its DeskJet 450wbt printer ($349 list price). In addition to connecting to laptops, PDAs, and other mobile devices using Bluetooth, this Mac- and Windows-compatible printer can connect to your PC with a standard USB cable. So, you can connect just about any PC or portable device directly to this printer, with wires or wirelessly.
Buy a Bluetooth adapter for your existing printer. Many printer manufacturers are focusing on building printers with built-in Wi-Fi, but that doesn’t have to stop you. Belkin, for example, offers a Bluetooth printer adapter, the F8T031 (about $75), that plugs into the USB port and works with most inkjet printers.
Audio systems
An area where Bluetooth is starting to make some inroads is in the realm of audio systems. This really should come as no surprise, considering that cell phone audio (for example, hands-free and headset systems) is where the vast majority of Bluetooth action occurs.
What we’re talking about here is Bluetooth devices that carry higher-quality audio signals — hi-fi (as opposed to Wi-Fi), as it were. Well, this is an exciting new area for the Bluetooth world because Bluetooth is designed for audio and supports relatively high-quality digital audio transmissions.
You may find Bluetooth audio devices in two distinct places:
Headphones: Many of us now carry iPods or other portable digital audio players (MP3 players, as they’re commonly known) wherever we go. You can identify us by our ubiquitous (at least among the 80 percent or so of MP3 player owners who use iPods) white headphone cords snaking up out of our pockets and into our ears. Well it’s time to cut that cord too. With systems like the Jabra Wireless Headphones ($13, www.Jabra.com), you can be up to 30 feet from your iPod while grooving to the latest single from White Stripes. The Jabra BT620s system even includes integrated controls so that you can not only listen but also adjust the volume, pause, or skip to the beginning of Blue Orchid. It even works as a headset for your music-capable smartphone and will stop the music so you can answer a call without missing a beat — so to speak.
Speaker systems: If you have a stereo or multichannel audio system in your house, you know the Achilles’ heel of all such systems: those ugly speaker wires running from the back of your receiver or amplifier to the speakers. For home theater systems, this problem is particularly acute because you have speakers in the back of the room (we wrote Home Theater For topic and even we have trouble dealing with that speaker wire run). Well, Bluetooth can come to the rescue. Many manufacturers make Bluetooth speaker systems that work with your Bluetooth-enabled devices. Companies such as iBluon and Motorola manufacture Bluetooth transmitters that take the signal from your stereo’s headset Out jack. So cut the cord and still enjoy your music.
Keyboards and meeses (that’s plural for mouse!)
Wireless keyboards and mice have been around for a while,but they’ve been a bit clunky. To get them working, you have to buy a pair of radio transceivers to plug into your computer, and then you have to worry about interference between your mouse and other devices in your home. With Bluetooth, things get much easier.He also attached a Bluetooth presenter mouse that works at the same time — Bluetooth is the only way to connect more than one mouse to a single computer — so he can work out and scroll through his e-mail. (Unfortunately, you can’t connect more than one keyboard to a computer, but if you have a Bluetooth keyboard it’s easy enough to pick it up and take it with you.) If your PC (or PDA, for that matter) has Bluetooth built in, you don’t need to buy any special adapters or transceivers. Just put the batteries in your keyboard and mouse and start working. You probably don’t even need to install any special software or drivers on your PC to make this work. For example, if you have a Mac, check out the Apple Wireless Keyboard and Mouse (www.apple.com/keyboard). They are slickly designed (of course — they’re from Apple!) and go for months on their batteries without any cords.
If your PC isn’t already Bluetooth equipped, consider buying the Logitech diNovo Media Desktop Laser (www.logitech.com, about $199). This system includes both a full-function wireless keyboard — one of those cool multimedia models with a ton of extra buttons for special functions (such as audio volume and MP3 fast forward and rewind) — and a detached media pad that acts as a hand remote or numeric keyboard with a built-in calculator. It also includes a wireless optical mouse (no mouse ball to clean) with the cool four-way scrolling feature, and a Bluetooth adapter that plugs into one of your PC’s USB ports. This adapter turns your PC into a Bluetooth PC. In other words, it can be used with any Bluetooth device, not just with the keyboard and mouse that come in the box with it. This kit is a great way to unwire your mouse and keyboard and get a Bluetooth PC, all in one fell swoop.
The diNovo Media Desktop Laser is easy to set up. You just plug the receiver into a USB port on the back of your computer and install the keyboard and mouse driver software. (This isn’t a Bluetooth requirement; rather, it allows you to use all the special buttons on the keyboard and the extra mouse buttons.) You must have an up-to-date version of Windows XP (simply use the built-in Windows XP software update program).
Bluetooth adapters
A large number of laptops and an increasing number of desktop computers — like most of the Apple product line — have built-in Bluetooth. However, if your PC doesn’t, you need some sort of adapter, just like you need an 802.11 adapter to connect your PC to your wireless LAN. The most common way to get Bluetooth onto your PC is by using a USB adapter (or dongle). These compact devices (about the size of your pinkie — unless you’re in the NBA, in which case, we say half a pinkie) plug directly into a USB port and are self-contained Bluetooth adapters. In other words, they need no external power supply or antenna. Figure 15-1 shows the D-Link DBT-120 USB Bluetooth adapter.
Figure 15-1:
The D-Link USB Bluetooth adapter is tiny — about the size of a small pack of gum.
Because Bluetooth is a relatively low-speed connection (remember that the maximum speed is only 732 Kbps in most cases, and a maximum of 3 Mbps for the fastest USB devices), USB connections will always be fast enough for Bluetooth. You don’t need to worry about having an available Ethernet, PC Card, or other high-speed connection available on your PC.
Because many people have more USB devices than USB ports on their computers, they often use USB hubs, which connect to one of the USB ports on the back of the computer and connect multiple USB devices through the hub to that port. When you’re using USB devices (such as Bluetooth adapters) that require power from the USB port, you should plug them directly into the PC itself and not into a hub. If you need to use a hub, make sure that it’s a powered hub (with its own cord running to a wall outlet or power strip). Insufficient power from an unpowered hub is perhaps the most common cause of USB problems.
If you have lots of USB devices, using a USB hub is simple. We’ve never seen one that even required special software to be loaded. Just plug the hub (use a standard USB cable — there should be one in the box with the hub) into one of the USB ports on the back of your PC. If it’s a powered hub (which we recommend), plug the power cord into your power strip and into the back of the hub (a designated power outlet is there), and you’re ready to go! It’s easy as can be. Now you can plug any USB device you have (keyboard, mouse, digital camera, printer — you name it) into the hub and away you go.
Street prices for these USB Bluetooth adapters generally run under $40, and you can find them at most computer stores (both online and the real brick-and-mortar stores down the street). Vendors include companies such as D-Link (www.dlink.com), Belkin (www.belkin.com), and Sony (www.sony.com).
Understanding Pairing and Discovery
A key concept to understand when you’re dealing with a Bluetooth device (like a cell phone or cordless headset) is pairing. Pairing is simply the process of two Bluetooth-enabled devices exchanging an electronic handshake (an electronic "greeting" where they introduce themselves and their capabilities) and then "deciding," based on their capabilities and your preferences (which you set up within the Bluetooth preferences menu on your device), how to communicate.
A typical Bluetooth cell phone has three key settings you need to configure to pair with another Bluetooth device:
Power: First, you need to make sure that Bluetooth is turned on. Many phones (and other battery-powered devices) have Bluetooth turned off by default, just to lower power consumption and maximize battery life. On your phone’s Bluetooth menu, make sure that you have turned on the power.
Discoverable: With most Bluetooth devices (such as cell phones or PCs and Macs), you can configure your Bluetooth system to be discoverable, which means that the device openly identifies itself to other nearby Bluetooth devices for possible pairings. If you set your device to be discoverable, it can be found — if you turn off this feature, your phone can still make Bluetooth connections, but only to devices with which it has previously paired.
This setting has different names on different phones.
Some phones and other devices aren’t discoverable all the time.
Device name: Most devices have a generic (and somewhat descriptive) name identifying them (like Motorola V3 RAZR). You can modify this name to whatever you want so that you recognize it when you establish a pairing.
(Un)plugging into Bluetooth access points
Although most people use Bluetooth to connect to devices in a peer-to-peer fashion — connecting two devices directly by using a Bluetooth air-link connection — in some situations you may want to be able to connect Bluetooth devices to your wireless home network itself (or to the Internet through your wireless home network). Enter the Bluetooth access point. Like the wireless access points we discuss throughout this topic, Bluetooth access points provide a means of connecting multiple Bluetooth devices to a wired network connection.
Bluetooth APs, like the Belkin Bluetooth Access Point with USB Print Server ($199), have a high-powered Bluetooth radio system (which means that they can reach as far as 100 meters, although your range is limited by the range of the devices you’re connecting to the AP, which is typically much shorter) and connect to your wireless home network with a wired Ethernet connection. The Belkin AP also includes a USB print server, so you can connect any standard USB printer to the AP and share it with both Bluetooth devices and any device connected to your wireless home network (including 802.11 devices — as long as your wireless home network is connected to the same Ethernet network).
Moving forward, we expect to see access points with both 802.11 and Bluetooth functionality built in — multipurpose access points that can connect to any wireless device in your home.
One other important Bluetooth concept affects the ability of two Bluetooth devices to talk to each other: Bluetooth profiles. A profile is simply a standardized service, or function, of Bluetooth. There are more than two dozen profiles for Bluetooth devices, such as HFP (Hands Free Profile) for hands-free cell phone use, or FTP (File Transfer Profile) for sending files (like pictures or electronic business cards) from one device to another.
For two devices to communicate using Bluetooth, they both must support a common profile (or profiles). And, for two Bluetooth devices to not only communicate but also do whatever it is that you want to do (such as send a picture from your camera to your Mac), they both need to support the profile that supports that function (in this case, the FTP profile).
Making all this happen is, we’re sorry to tell you, highly dependent on the particular Bluetooth devices you’re using. And because more than a thousand Bluetooth devices are available, we can’t account for every possibility here. This is one of those times where you should spend a few minutes reading the manual (sorry!) and figuring out exactly which steps your device requires. (We hate having to tell you that, but it’s true.)
We don’t totally leave you hanging here though. Here are some generic steps you need to take:
1. Go to the Bluetooth setup or configuration menu of both devices and do the following:
a. Turn on the Bluetooth power.
b. (Optional) Customize your device name to something you recognize.
c. Make the devices discoverable.
Typically, you set up one device to be discoverable and the other to "look" for discoverable devices. For example, you may press a button on a Bluetooth cordless headset to make it discoverable, and invoke a menu setting on your phone to allow it to discover compatible Bluetooth devices.
One device notifies you with an alert or onscreen menu item that it has discovered the other, and asks whether you want to pair. For example, if you press the button on your headset, your cell phone displays a message asking whether you want to pair.
2. Confirm that you do indeed want to make your device discoverable by pressing Yes or OK (or whatever positive option your device offers).
3. Enter the passkey and press Yes or OK.
Most Bluetooth devices use a passkey (numeric or alphanumeric code), which allows you to confirm that it’s your device that’s pairing and not the device belonging to the guy in the trench coat who’s hiding behind a newspaper across the coffee shop. You find the passkey for most devices in their manuals (drat! — the dreaded manual pops up again). In some cases (like pairing with a PC or Mac), one device generates and displays a passkey, which you then enter into the other device.
Your devices verify the passkey and pair. That’s all you have to do in most cases — you now have a nice wireless Bluetooth connection set up, and you’re ready to do whatever it is you want to do with Bluetooth (like talk on your phone hands free!).
After you’ve paired two devices, they should be paired for good. The next time you want to connect them, you should only have to go through Steps 1 and 2 (maybe even just Step 1) and skip the whole passkey thing. Bluetooth devices are supposed to mate for life (like penguins). Sometimes, however, Bluetooth is a bit funky and things don’t work as you had planned. Don’t be surprised if you have to repeat all these steps the next time you want to connect. A great deal of work is going on to make Bluetooth more user friendly, and making pairing easier and more consistent is the primary focus.
