Adventures in Bluetooth
Our editor discovers no wires doesn't mean no new hassles.
 
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The promise of Bluetooth? A simple way to connect devices wirelessly within a short range, making it an ideal technology for the home or small office. But based on our tests of some of the first generation of products, Bluetooth also promises to increase your volume of help desk calls as remote workers struggle with difficult installations and overly technical software.
You may have heard Bluetooth described as enabling a personal-area network (PAN), which is much smaller than a wireless LAN or WAN in terms of range and usage. Bluetooth devices operate in the 2.4-GHz frequency, the same as 802.11b wireless LANs and many cordless phones. Products transmit data within approximately a 30-feet range, at speeds of about 1M bit/sec.
Because the technology lends itself so well to remote and mobile environments, we were curious to see how easy (or difficult) it is to get various Bluetooth-enabled products to connect, or "discover" each other. We also wanted to see whether a remote worker with average technical knowledge could successfully set up a Bluetooth network, or whether IT would need to be called in.
The players
For our test, we selected a sampling of devices from a wide number available. These include:
We didn't test Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones, but travelers might find them useful. Connecting a PC via Bluetooth to a mobile phone that can dial out on a next-generation wireless network will be a heavily used application. In the U.S., Bluetooth-enabled phones are starting to appear, including Sony Ericsson's T68 model.
Getting to know you
With the exception of the iPaq, each product we tested required that we install software and, in some cases, drivers on our notebook PC. Because Compaq's Bluetooth Manager already was on the device, activating Bluetooth on the PDA was a simple matter of clicking a menu item called "Turn radio on."
Installing the Bluetooth PC Cards on the notebook was as easy; just insert the card into the PC Card slot and install the driver from the CD-ROM. Using Windows XP made it easier because the operating system is Bluetooth-friendly. Setting up the access point and both printers took considerably longer because we had to install printer drivers and configure network connectivity.
Once we got all the devices set up and within range, we used the software on the notebook to discover another Bluetooth device. While you need to initiate this process manually, discovery doesn't require line of sight between devices. At this point, the software sends a signal looking to see whether any Bluetooth devices are in range. On returning a list of "found" devices, you simply select the one to which you want to connect.
Once we got two devices to discover each other, we found there really isn't too much they can do. When you're connecting, for example, a PC to PC, or a PC to PDA, you can share files or exchange "business cards," similar to beaming your contact information onto a PDA.
More specific devices (such as the access points and printers) contain "profiles" that let you connect to the Internet or print a document. Once the software discovers the other Bluetooth device, you then choose the service you want to activate. Depending on your needs, this could involve one step (connect to access point for Internet) to up to three or four steps (initial connection to the printer).
Easy for whom?
Your remote workers will be comfortable installing a Bluetooth PC Card and any accessory that connects to a PDA. But for connections to a Bluetooth access point or a printer, the IT department will probably want (or need) to get involved.
Take for instance the installation of the Bluetooth access point. It required that we plug the device into our Ethernet connection, locate the access point's media access control (MAC) address (which in this case was affixed to the access point but required removal of the plastic case), and input the address on a different networked computer to find its IP address. We had to install the software on the notebook so it could discover the access point. While some remote workers are comfortable with this level of technical installation, they're the minority. Moreover, when it comes to tweaking IP address and MAC addresses, many IT departments want to handle it themselves to avoid trouble down the road.
Bluetooth printing frustrated us even more. Not only did we have to follow the discovery steps, but we also had to ensure the printer was connecting via the correct COM port. The Troy printer adapter software had us installing virtual COM ports - an exercise that could push remote workers and many an IT administrator to throw the notebook against the wall. The documentation was of no help, by the way.
Last, we learned the Bluetooth software that some companies provide is still bogged down with unfriendly technical terms that could intimidate your remote workers, and some pretty unintuitive interfaces. Even something as simple as finding where we transferred a particular file often involved several clicks on the software.
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