Getting started with Bluetooth

Originally published in GP magazine .

Written for GP magazine around 2004. This is the version I submitted - the published article may have been edited.

Why a wireless communications system was named after a Danish king from the late 900s is a puzzle. However, Bluetooth wireless communication is anything but a puzzle. Basically, Bluetooth-enabled devices can, over a short range, talk to one another without wires and share information and data. Moreover, they do this with very little technical expertise required from you, the user.

Where most people will have come across Bluetooth is in modern mobile phones, which are Bluetooth enabled and can be used with special headsets. As long as you are wearing the headset when your phone rings, it can be in a pocket or handbag or even on the back seat and there is no need to get it out to use it. However, many more devices can be used with Bluetooth.

Bluetooth is designed to be an easy-to-use system particularly suited to getting rid of wires between devices like computers and printers. For example, a Bluetooth printer could sit on a desk in the middle of an office and any nearby computers or laptops can print to it. If you walk into range with a handheld device then this can also print to it.

If you are used to plugging your PDA into a cradle to keep it synchronised with your main computer, then Bluetooth could do this as you walked into the room. An address book on a Bluetooth phone can also be kept up to date without having to search for the special wire needed to link them together. There are even handheld gaming devices which can talk to each other using Bluetooth and allow multiple people to play against each other.

Given that Bluetooth is interesting technology and potentially very liberating, what if your phone has it but your computer doesn’t? Luckily there are several ways of adding Bluetooth to a computer, laptop or even a PDA that doesn’t come with it as standard.

One of the easiest and cheapest ways of adding Bluetooth is to use a USB dongle. This is similar in size to USB memory sticks, which are the current favourite giveaway of the drug representatives. To install it, simply plug it into a free USB port on your computer and it should work automatically.

I have just tested a Bluetooth USB adapter from a company called Trust. I run Windows XP which is patched up to date - that is, all the updates are installed - and my computer recognised the dongle and installed it in 30 seconds. The latest version of Windows XP has been specially set up to make using Bluetooth easy, and when a Bluetooth device is installed a new menu on the control panel is available and an icon on the bottom right of the display tells you when you are connected.

There are a variety of settings you can play with. If you want to connect to other devices from your computer you can search for other devices using the menu, or this can happen automatically. I used this option to find a Bluetooth printer, and once found it was installed as a normal printer under Windows and I could print to it from any program without any problems.

If you want other devices to find your computer you can activate this feature. This can be used to allow your phone, as you walk up to your computer, to find the computer and back up your contact database to it.

As well as USB dongles you can also buy Bluetooth cards that go inside your PC. If you have a PDA with a slot in it you can also get Bluetooth adaptors that fit into these at reasonable cost. This may be particularly interesting for people who occasionally want to write a lot with their PDA or laptop, as there are now wireless mice and keyboards that work over Bluetooth.