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Are All Bluetooth Dongle Created Equal?

I am looking for a Bluetooth dongle for my laptop and have found them price from less then a dollar on the internet to $22.++ at Best Buy. I am wondering what the differance might be other then the bottom line. Any suggestions where to buy from or brand.

kg9dk


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Synthiam
#1  
You know, that's a good question. The units we are selling work great. They work great in windows 7, but not so great in XP.

It's really hard to tell until you try:)

One thing I would recommend... be careful about installing third party bluetooth stacks - in my experience, they never work. Always use the windows bluetooth stack.
#2  
I agree with DJ except for Toshiba modules where you should use the Toshiba stack which works great but only with their modules.

I have a $3 no name one from Frys that works as well as the Toshiba that was built into my old Dell laptop. I have had one issue connecting to a serial device, but I can't connect from another device either, so I don't think it is a problem with the module.
PRO
Canada
#3  
DJ is quite correct about using third party stacks, as I've experienced the same thing time and time again and had nothing but trouble. Sticking with the windows bluetooth stack is the way to go for sure. If you can't find a dongle that is plug and play with windows, keeping searching.

I've had pretty good luck with getting bluetooth dongles from Deal extreme, they seem to work every time with WinXP without issue. You can find them
here.


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#4  
I've got one of DJ's dongles on windows XP and haven't had any issues whatsoever.
#5  
Thanks all for the Bluetooth info, it looks like I have more to learn about bluetooth. I went to Wikipedia and read what they had, not a lot of it stuck but enoough for the first time.

Then some one menition "stacks" sounds like I have a whole new Bluetooth world to explore.

I went the "Extreme Deal "site, I like the fact that gave some information that jive with what I had read at Wikipedia, and they had reviews. I order a BT dongle. It sounds like it may be coming from Hong Kong so that may take awhile.

I will probably be back often Thanks for the help.
John.kg9dk
#6  
A bluetooth "stack" is the software that provides both the hardware drivers and the software services. Until SP3, Microsoft XP didn't have it's own stack, so it was provided by the hardware vendor, and they usually got it from Widcom or Toshiba, but there were a few others out there as well. Now there is a Microsoft stack (which was actually purchased by Microsoft from Widcom) so this is less of a concern.

We mostly bring it up because people who install stacks other than Microsoft's on Windows 7 tend to have more problems than if they just let Microsoft handle it.

Alan
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