Finally, a Bluetooth breakthrough

Some guys spend their long weekends on home improvement projects. I spend mine tinkering with my computers, the network, or hooking up some new gadget. Unlike most of my fellow tinkerers, I get to satisfy my inner Bob Vila by writing about my projects, turning "This Old House" into "This Old Computer" (minus all the Craftsman tools).

My Memorial Day project this year--after hanging the flag and dusting off the Weber kettle grill--was installing my very first Bluetooth gadget, the 3Com Wireless Bluetooth Printing Kit.

The kit consists of two pieces: A printer adapter that clamps onto the printer's parallel port and a USB adapter for the computer. The executive summary: It works.

But before I get to the details, a word or two about Bluetooth itself. Many people think--perhaps because they once heard me say so on the radio--that the wireless technology was named after a pirate. But that's just what the name made me think of.

ONCE I DID some actual research, I found out that Harald Blåtand was a Danish king, who later ruled Norway and died in 987. There's still some debate about how he got the name "Bluetooth" (Blåtand). Some versions say it was because he suffered from frequent toothaches, others because he was so partial to the wild blueberries of his homeland. (There's a Swedish children's rhyme to that effect.) Personally, I prefer the theory that the old Viking world "blåtand" actually referred to his unusually dark (for a Viking) complexion.

However he got the name, Scandinavian engineers chose it for their new wireless technology because of Harald's rep as a great king who "united" Denmark and Norway and brought Christianity to Scandinavia. (For more about Good King Harald, check out Ericsson's official version of the story. And check out the statue they've got in front of Ericsson's research facility in Lund, Sweden.)

The reason I'm spending so much column space on this fascinating (to me, anyway) story is because the 3Com kit was so easy to set up and worked so much better than I expected.

At the printer end, I attached a printer dongle, which requires connection to a wall-wart power cube, to the parallel port. That works--at least if your printer isn't using one of those tiny connectors that HP is so fond of these days. I presume there is some sort of expensive adapter available for those, but I didn't have one lying around, so I put the Bluetooth adapter on my Epson C80 inkjet.

AT THE COMPUTER END, I attached a 3Com Bluetooth Wireless USB Adapter to one of my Windows boxes. The 3Com adapter deserves some sort of prize for industrial engineering. If Apple were designing wireless USB adapters, they'd look like this.

For example: The connector where the antenna meets the USB plug is twistable, so that the antenna end (which can lie flush with the body of the unit or extend perpendicularly) is always properly oriented. If twisting the connector doesn't do the trick, the device comes with a short cable, so you can move the antenna to a better spot without moving your computer.

3Com also offers a Bluetooth PC Card that uses the company's XJack antenna technology, which allows the spring-loaded antenna to be hidden inside the card when not in use. I wish other wireless companies put as much thought into such useful design features as 3Com does.

I was able to find the USB card for about $110 online. The printer kit has a $250 list price, but I have yet to find it available online, except from 3Com.

Setting up the devices was simple enough, though it would help to have some Macintosh experience. That's because the 3Com software you use to select the proper Bluetooth connection is very much like what Apple calls a "finder." Selecting what you want to connect to--only a printer in this case, but other things in the future--is easy enough. But it takes a little getting used to. Note that Microsoft has said that a Windows service pack due later this year will have Bluetooth built in, rendering the 3Com applet unnecessary.

WHILE THIS KIT is designed for printing, the PC adapter could be used for any Bluetooth application, including LAN access, faxing, file-swapping, and other tasks. I'd done the file swapping, but don't have a Bluetooth cellular phone, so I haven't used Bluetooth to connect PC-to-cell phone-to-Internet.

Bluetooth is pitched as a replacement for USB or printer cables, with a reliable range of about 30 feet. But in unscientific testing, I found I could use it to print from pretty much anyplace my 802.11b wireless network was visible. (The theoretical range of 802.11b is ten times Bluetooth's.) Now Bluetooth is much slower (Bluetooth's 720 kbps vs. 11mbps for 802.11b), but it could be a competitor with my wireless net for some apps.

Which raises an interesting point: My Bluetooth-enabled laptop means I can sit anywhere I want, yet still stay connected to my printer. My 802.11b WiFi network does the same thing. So is Bluetooth a potential replacement for WiFi? Tomorrow I'll explore that very question.

What do you think? Have you used any Bluetooth devices? Did they work? Were they easy to set up?