Belkin Bluetooth USB Adapter ReviewJuly 31st, 2002
Pros:Wireless convenience; compact.
Cons: Cumbersome software; limited selection of peripherals.
Verdict: The Belkin USB Bluetooth Adapter delivers the promises of freeing youreslf from cables, but it still needs work to appeal everyone.
Bluetooth, one of the rising stars in wireless technologies, is ready set to eliminate cables running between your cell phone and its accessories, and between your computer and its peripherals -- usually USB devices. Before computers come with Bluetooth as standard, the matchbox-sized Belkin Bluetooth USB Adapter is your intermediate solution to reach the wireless world.
Look Ma, No Wires With the USB Bluetooth Adapter, you can do PC-to-PC file transfer, synchronization with a Palm- or Pocket PC-OS PDA, and Internet access over Bluetooth cell-phones. Bluetooth keyboards and mice are near, but they’ll come with their own adapter. In Asia, Bluetooth has been successful in replacing the wired earphones with wireless counterparts. Some other interesting ideas have also materialized, including a Bluetooth hard drive, announced by Toshiba earlier, and a Bluetooth battery-powered pen for sending handwritings to another device. As developers continue to unleash the potential of Bluetooth, the possibilities in which devices can interact appear to be endless.
As good as it may sound, Bluetooth has many shortcomings as revealed by the USB Bluetooth Adapter. First, it’s slow; the maximum throughout is 1Mbps while the reality shows the speed falls between 50 and 80kbps. At such speeds, you will likely to be waiting for days for a large file to complete transfer. In some instances, your 802.11b Wi-Fi network will likely to introduce some interference to your Bluetooth connection if two different standard devices get within 6 feet. It’s probably best to leave the heavy data exchanging tasks to 802.11b Wi-Fi.
Reality Check In our reality check, we looked at the ease of connecting our Ericsson T39m to the Belkin USB Bluetooth Adapter. To get started, we first ‘paired’ up the T39 with the USB Bluetooth Adapter. Then, we turned on the ‘discovery’ mode on the T39, announcing its presence to near-by devices. Next step was allowing the USB adapter to locate the phone. Upon detection, we were prompted to enter the ‘passkey’ to gain control of the cell-phone. Afterwards, the software successfully bonded with the T39, and put it in the paired device list. As a note, if you want the connection to be encrypted, the ‘pairing’ procedure will have to be repeated. From a practical standpoint, it’s convenient to connect the net wirelessly without pulling out the T39 from our pocket, and to send 100 contacts to the phone from Outlook. The hub software, which manages your Bluetooth neighborhood, has a thorough help guide, but we would prefer a more seamless connection experience.
The Bottom Line In the end, we were able to complete all our tests, though the ride was obviously not as smooth as we anticipated. Belkin USB Bluetooth Adapter may appeal to the wireless-savvy enthusiasts, but until Microsoft releases a more robust support for Windows XP and 2000, it’s not quite ready for novices.
Where to buy Belkin Bluetooth USB Adapter?
User Review(s)
"A note about range..." Hey Wolter,
If you bought this adapter because you wanted to increase your range, & were dissappointed by it's failure to improve your range.
You may be surprised to know that the range for a sync depends on the trasmit power (and thus range) of BOTH devices.
So, if your cell has a 10 M range & the BT NIC has a 100 M range, your max range is 10, and not 100 meters. IE, you can talk to them, but you can't hear them.
Hope this clears things up a bit.
Happy new year,
Drew From Drew, February 12, 2005
"Works Great with MacOS X" Too bad the reviewer limited their platform to Windows. Bluetooth on MacOS X works awsome, as advertised, and way cooler than expected. Look what I can do with my SE T68i. http://homepage.mac.com/jonassalling/Shareware/Clicker/. Possibilities are endless From SeoulBrother, May 06, 2003
"It works for me!" The Bluetooth setup is a little confusing--but that's the technology and not Belkin's fault. Once I had it set up it worked just great! I love it.
Some advice on set up:
Once you install it, it puts a “My Bluetooth Places” icon in your system tray and on your desktop; then you have to go through a “discovery” process to introduce the two items.
Synchronizing Outlook is not that intuitive, I had to figure that out by trial and error, so here is what I found:
Once you do that, all you have to do is double-click on the icon, Entire Bluetooth Neighborhood, your phones name, then in the right pane six icons appear; right click on IrMC Synchronization, select “Synchronize” and then it will sync Outlook and your phone.
Get yourself one—it’s way cool!
From John Berns, November 14, 2002
We're currently upgrading our user review system; so we won't be accepting new reviews for now. Bluetooth USB Adapter Specs
Interface(s)
Original USB
Released date
April 2002
Platforms
Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, MacOS X
