Bluetooth adapters

Bluetooth adapters
If your PC doesn’t have built-in Bluetooth (and most don’t, although a growing
number of laptop computers, such as Apple’s 17" G4 PowerBook — Pat really
wants one of these — and some Toshiba and Sony VAIO laptops do ship with
built-in Bluetooth), you’ll need some sort of adapter, just like you’ll need an
802.11 adapter to connect your PC to your wireless LAN. The most common
way to get Bluetooth onto your PC is by using a USB adapter (or dongle).
These compact devices (about the size of your pinkie — unless you’re in the
NBA, in which case, we’ll say half a pinkie) plug directly into a USB port and
are self-contained Bluetooth adapters. In other words, they need no external
power supply or antenna. Figure 15-1 shows the D-Link USB Bluetooth adapter.

Figure 15-1:
D-Link’s
USB
Bluetooth
adapter is
tiny —
about the
size of a
small pack
of gum.
Because Bluetooth is a relatively low-speed connection (remember the maximum
speed is only 732 Kbps), USB connections — which are too slow for
high-speed wireless LAN adapters like 802.11a and g adapters — are always
going to be fast enough for Bluetooth. So you don’t need to worry about
having an available Ethernet, PC Card, or other high-speed connection available
on your PC.
(Un)plugging into Bluetooth access points
Although most people use Bluetooth to connect
to devices in a peer-to-peer fashion —
connecting two devices directly together using
a Bluetooth airlink connection — there might
be situations where you want to be able to connect
Bluetooth devices to your wireless home
network itself (or to the Internet through your
wireless home network). Enter the Bluetooth
access point. Like the wireless access points
that we discuss throughout the book, Bluetooth
access points provide a means of connecting
multiple Bluetooth devices to a wired network
connection.
Bluetooth APs, like Belkin’s Bluetooth Access
Point ($169), have a high-powered Bluetooth
radio system (meaning they can reach as far as
100 meters, although your range will be limited
by the range of the devices that you’re connecting
to the AP, which is typically much
shorter) and connect to your wireless home network
with a wired Ethernet connection. Belkin’s
AP also includes a USB print server, so you can
connect any standard USB printer to the AP and
share it with both Bluetooth devices and any
device connected to your wireless home network
(including 802.11 devices — as long as
your wireless home network is connected to the
same Ethernet network).
Moving forward, we expect to see access points
with both 802.11 and Bluetooth functionality built
in — multipurpose access points that can connect
to any wireless device in your home.
Because many people have more USB devices than USB ports on their computers,
they often use USB hubs, which connect to one of the USB ports on
the back of the computer and connect multiple USB devices through the hub
to that port. When you’re using USB devices (such as Bluetooth adapters)
that require power from the USB port, it’s best to plug them directly into the
PC itself and not into a hub. If you need to use a hub, make sure that it’s a
powered hub (with its own cord running to a wall outlet or power strip).
Insufficient power from an unpowered hub is perhaps the most common
cause of USB problems.
If you’ve got a lot of USB devices, using a USB hub is really simple. We’ve
never seen one that even required any special software to be loaded. Just
plug the hub (use a standard USB cable — there should be one in the box
with the hub) into one of the USB ports on the back of your PC. If it’s a powered
hub (which we recommend), plug the power cord into your power strip
and into the back of the hub (there’ll be a designated power outlet there),
and you’re ready to go! Easy as can be. Now you can plug any USB device that
you’ve got (keyboard, mouse, digital camera, printer, you name it) into the
hub and away you go.
Street prices for these USB Bluetooth adapters generally run under a hundred
dollars, and you can find them at most computer stores (both online and the
real brick-and-mortar store down the street). Vendors include companies
such as D-Link (www.dlink.com), Belkin (www.belkin.com), and Sony
(www.sony.com).