Bluetooth is a wonderful technology when it works. I have been using a laptop with built-in Bluetooth support for over 5 years. I’ve upgraded from a tiny IOgear mouse to a Microsoft bluetooth travel mouse 5000. Having internal bluetooth makes perfect sense when you want to protect your valuable USB ports from damage and the cost is nominal and usually around $25. You also get the benefit of having empty USB ports for other things like a light, fan, or USB memory sticks.
I’ve also paired my Nokia BH-503 bluetooth Headphones, which produce high-quality stereo right along side the mouse with the same bluetooth chip and have no lag in either one. This goes for my Apple bluetooth keyboard I won in a contest. All three devices on one connection without lag… pretty cool, huh?
Using these features is about as simple as SuSE was, but can be done in the GUI from the system status area. Just enable your device to be seen, click the bluetooth icon, setup new device from the status tool and in about 20 seconds and a PIN (Ubuntu can even provide the correct one for you) & you’re ready to party! Yeah, there’s one more trick to getting stereo, but that involves selecting that option from the Sound properties menu, again found in the system status area. You can even use bluetooth tethering with cell phone for data transfer as well as web access. Continue reading →
