Bluetooth and Windows XP
I have Bluetooth on my Windows XP laptop.
It was one of the things I was wanted after having it on my PowerBook. So, now I have it. And I never use it. Because it sucks.
It sucks because of stupid driver issues. Should I use Microsoft’s drivers? No? Disable them. Use the Widcomm drivers. Find it from your vendor. If you tray icon looks like this, bad. If it looks like this, good. Yadda, yadda. Why do I need to go through this?
It sucks because I have to manually connect to the device before I can use it. Why can’t Windows XP just connect to the device automatically when I try to interact with the device (like my PowerBook)?
One thing that does work though is the Bluetooth DUN with my handheld. I actually manaaged to set that up without consulting Google.
Skype + Bluetooth + PowerBook = awesome! I wish I could get Skype to send audio to my headset on my Windows XP machine. But even if that was working, it would still suck. Because I would still need to manually connect to the headset before I could actually use it (see above). Oh! Someone is calling my on Skype. Let me find the Bluetooth icon, and connect to me headset (click, click, click, click). Give it a second. Oh! Damn! I missed the call. And leaving it connected is a poor option. At the very least it uses more battery life. And if your headset is like mine, it constantly beeps while it is.. doing something.. (complaining about a connection that isn’t actually doing anything).