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Bluetooth

By Ian Urie


Bluetooth is fast becoming one of the more ubiquitous protocols used nowadays.
We now have bluetooth stereo headsets for our mobiles, files being sent to laptops etc.
Most computers  don't come with bluetooth built in , but with the growth of sales of laptops, dongles are now prevalent.
Above , you can see a picture of one such device.
They can be had from most computer shops or pick one up from the likes of E-Bay for a few pounds.
The one shown above claims a range of 100m.
Installation is a breeze.
Simply plug it in to a USB port.
I normally run in Linux, and when I plugged this in while booted into Mandriva, it got automatically detected.
It also told me I didn't have software installed for it,  and asked for permission to download and install it.
A quick click on OK and that was the job done.
With Kbluetooth installed (I run KDE), we can then find who's got bluetooth discovery switched on.





We can send files or receive them to our computer this way.






Now, don't think that you suddenly have a 100mb/s connection to your phone, you don't.
File transfer speeds are as you would normally get  from phone to phone.
I'd estimate the rate at under 1mb/s.
It does mean that you don't need to use a cable to connect your phone to the computer.
It also means you can use any bluetooth device on your computer, such as a headset.



I've paired the phone in the above grab.
Going back to the Kbluemon page, we can check what services are available for what device.



The range of devices using bluetooth is growing daily.
If you use Internet phoning for instance, you can simply use the bluetooth headset out of your car .
You DO use a bluetooth headset in the car or similar handsfree, I trust???
You can decide to get larger files using the network access point.
Lots of different options.
For minimal cost , you can expand your computer simply by plugging one of these in.
End messing about with leads to transfer files to and from your phone.