Belkin Bluetooth USB Adapter > Reviews > But my teeth are white

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Average
Ease of Installation	Very poor - very time consuming and confusing
Ease of use	Very easy
Reliability	Excellent
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Easy to use
Disadvantages:	not easy to set up

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I am not the most technically minded person in the world. Yet I had heard of Bluetooth, how it allows electrical things to "talk" to each other without the need for wires. As with a lot of new tech stuff, I thought it sounded good, but could not see a time when it would be of benefit to me.

Then came Christmas, I received a great present in the form of a mobile phone, being a bit of a Billy no mates, I don't get that many calls, hmmmmm ok no calls. But the phone does so much more, it is an mp3 player, downloads games, pictures, videos, internet and a whole host of other things, that belong in a different review. The reason for mentioning this phone is it also has Bluetooth connectivity (I think that is the proper term).

Anyway whilst using the phones online capability, I looked at the things I could download to my phone. Yep games cost between £2.50 and £5 each, music tracks again vary in cost, but can be £3 each. I faced a choice, either not use the phone as I wanted (for entertainment) or spend a fortune with online downloads directly to the phone. To be honest I am not one of the wealthiest people around, so decided there must be a better way.

With the phone came a lead and software to allow me to connect directly to my PC (windows98se). After three frustrating weeks of trying, I realised that although the phone and pc should be able to talk to each other through the cable, it was not going to happen. Two reasons for this 98se is now old, as is the pc, then there is the little matter of my malady known as nogoodattechystuff.

As you can probably imagine, me and my Christmas prezzie were now only just on speaking terms. I was still scratching my head as to a way of getting my pc and phone on speaking terms. When I saw the Argos catalogue and decided to buy the Belkin Bluetooth USB Adapter, this was a last ditch effort on my part, and in truth this was still the cheapest option I could think of, the other choice was upgrade the pc. I also chose the Belkin one as I have other Belkin products from them that are attached to my PC and all work fine and I had no problems installing them.

So after a short trip to Argos and spending of £15.99 I returned home with my new toy. Thankfully I have now thrown away the packaging so cannot tell you what that looked like, although it was in a small plastic Argos carrier bag.

The way I work with new things is, make cup of coffee, then read all the instructions thoroughly before proceeding. The instructions were very minimal but I did note DO NOT INSERT BLUETOOTH ADAPTER UNTIL PROMPTED. For those of you who do decide to get one of these for yourselves please do take note of the above warning. I thought I did it correctly but mucked up along the way.

So ready to install, I placed the CD into my PC's drive and followed the installation wizards instructions, very slowly and very carefully. It was a very slow process, the wizard searched and deleted any old Bluetooth software it could find. I had to put my windows 98se disc in twice during the process. Then the wizard said it could not detect any Bluetooth devices. Quandary time is that an instruction asking me to insert the adapter or not? After much pondering time I decided that it was not an instruction. I continued with the installation process finishing with the nearly always obligatory reboot.
After the PC came back to life, I placed the Bluetooth adapter into my USB hub, the light on it came on, then I clicked on the new Bluetooth icon on my desktop. After a couple of minutes I got the message No Bluetooth device detected (or words to that effect), followed by nothing apart from a frozen PC. I followed this with a frustrating series of reboots, trying to get my new toy working, reboot with device in hub, tried it without the hub, by attaching directly to the PC's USB. Tried without the adapter connected and clicking on the icon first. All with the same result "nothing".

So back in the packaging (that I cannot remember what it looked like) went the adapter and the CD, gently lobbed into the back of a drawer. Yep I had a sulk on. This sulk lasted well over a week

Now not wanting to be beaten and with my newly acquired determination head on (a buy it now bargain from ebay), I decided to try again. The first thing I did this time was put the CD in again, the wizard this time said it was going to reinstall the software. This was an even longer process than the first time as it first uninstalled itself. As before I followed the instructions (including inserting the 98se disc when required). When I got to the point of it saying, "it could not detect any Bluetooth devices" I decided to put the adapter into the USB hub and see what happened. Well it detected it, oh did I feel smug.
The satisfied feeling was however short-lived, I tried clicking on the icon and the PC froze again.

I knew that I had got further this time and really wanted to get this working. This time when I rebooted the PC I had the adapter in the hub. I clicked on the icon and the software burst into life. Unlike the installation, using the Bluetooth to transfer is simplicity itself.

From PC to mobile..
Select the file (picture, mp3, video etc) that you want, right click on the mouse, you can then choose to copy/send via Bluetooth, then it's a question of making sure the device (phone) has its connectivity switched on and is discoverable. Follow the on screen instructions, to bond you need to put in the same password on both devices (four numbers), this bonds the two Bluetooth devices to each other. Then its send on PC and then accept on the phone. As if by magic the file is transferred.

From mobile to PC..
This depends on your mobile, the normal way is again select the file on your phone and copy using Bluetooth.
You can also do this through your PC, this is where the software comes into its own, click on the software and once open, get the software to look at the contents of your phone and then its drag onto the PC.

Now this is all being done on a 500meg P3, running windows 98SE, so I would guess that those of you using newer and/or faster PC's would have no problems.

Despite the initial teething problems I cannot recommend this highly enough, all I have is a subtle little bit of plastic sticking out of my hub, with a little blue light. The adapter has already saved me more than the cost of it. To put music onto my phone all I do now is pick the music I want, place the CD in my PC, save it as mp3 then transfer it to my phone. I can save photos I have taken with the phone to my PC. I know that this is only the beginning of the things that I will be able to use this adapter for. I will in time be able to send/receive files from other PC/laptops, send to a printer all without the need for extra leads. I have as yet only scratched the surface. I am amazed that something so small can be so useful.

Just to keep those of you happy who like tech details I will give you a couple (please don't ask me what they mean though) My adapter uses V1.2 and is backwards compatible with V1.1, max indoor range of 10m (100m range is available for a little extra cost, but I did not need that)

Operating system requirements W98SE, ME, 2000,XP.
Min processor 200MHz
Min RAM 64 MB
And it needs a USB port to plug it into, (I am using mine through a hub without problems).