Bluetooth, how does it work?

[Insomniac]

In real life, how does this work?

I've got visions of me sitting in a town center with a bluetooth dongle stuck in a laptop and being able to see every bluetooth enabled device as the owner walks past...

I hope its more secure than I'm imagining? Never having used bluetooth I'm just stabbing in the dark...

[Michael]

Bluetooth devices have to be in discoverable mode for you to normally "see" that they are there. Discoverable is the default state for most non-headset devices today, but it wasn't in the earlier days.

This is not a real issue because you need a PIN to establish a connection with another Bluetooth device, or the person on the remote end has to explicitly allow the connection to take place (ie. "Joe's 8910 is trying to connect. Allow?").

In spite of the talk, there is very little you can do with "Bluejacking".

[Insomniac]

Thats good. Didn't fancy the idea of somebody being able to rake through my phonebook or shedule...

Can bluetooth be used to dial up to the internet from your laptop using your mobile (ie T610)?

[Michael]

Sure, that is probably the most common use for it after Headsets.

I use my PDA more often than a laptop, but the idea is the same.

[dabaj]

I went looking for an email and instant messaging capable phone recently and the salesman at Best Buy strongly recommended I buy a BT enabled phone and a BT enabled PDA (HP Pocket PC based). The rationale was that you get greater functionality with the PDA and you can use the PDA to check email and to IM while on a call! He said DSL was an appropriate analogy. Hmmm...

Now that last bit would be awesome for my business but I was highly skeptical. It seems to me that I've read that you couldn't use data functions at the same time as voice and I don't want to spend the better part of a grand without knowing.

I'm betting you guys have tried this and know whether this is workable. Thanks.

[Michael]

Originally posted by dabaj
I'm betting you guys have tried this and know whether this is workable. Thanks.

Odd as it might sound, I never tried that. But I sure as heck can....give me a moment here....

Well, it worked. For the most part.

While I was able to make a voice call while making a GPRS data connection with my iPAQ over Bluetooth, I was not able to use my Bluetooth headset at the same time.

Seems that the T68i couldn't handle the serial port profile and headset profile being used at the same time, though it can handle two serial ports being open at the same time.

So yeah, it works.

But as to the recomendation of your sales guy, I tend to agree with him. I prefer a separate PDA and phone, connected by Bluetooth. But I believe I am in the minority here, as most of the MobileBurn guys eschew that in favor of using a P800 - a combined unit.

[dabaj]

I'm surprised but that's great. What do you think of using Palm based PDAs with BT enabled phones? I've heard they don't work as well as Pocket PC based units but partial to Palms.

[Michael]

I had no problem using a Palm m505 with the SDIO Bluetooth card.

I would agree that the PocketPC OS seems easier to work with when dealing with Bluetooth than PalmOS 4, but I have never tried any PalmOS 5 devices - so I can't comment there.