Bluetooth
Networking for your Palm, Pocket PC and Computer Posted July 31, 2003 by Lisa
Gade, Editor-in-Chief
Asanté FriendlyNet
Bluetooth USB Adapter FBT100
As
Bluetooth enabled portable devices proliferate, a good number
of well known networking hardware companies are jumping into
the USB Bluetooth adapter space. Asanté, an established
player in the Mac networking arena and in the general networking
arena (Ethernet hubs, switches and cards) now offers a USB Bluetooth
dongle that works well in Windows and Mac OS X. The adapter is
reasonably priced at $45US, and you'll find it for less at places
like Amazon.com.
The
FriendlyNet Bluetooth adapter is a USB 1.1 device that will
work on USB 1.1. and 2.0-equipped computers, and it has a maximum
transfer rate of 723kbps. The radio is a class 2 unit that
should have a range of ~ 30 feet and uses the Cambridge Silicon
Radio BlueCore2 chipset. Inside you'll find a CD with a PDF
manual covering Mac and Windows installation, setup and use.
Drivers for Windows 98SE/ME/2000 are on the CD, and drivers
aren't required for Mac OX 10.2 (Jaguar) or Windows XP.
Using
Bluetooth on a PC
The
FriendlyNet Bluetooth adapter uses Widcomm software
for Windows, as do many other adapters. Once installation is
complete, you'll see a "My Bluetooth Places" icon
on your desktop and a Bluetooth icon in your system tray. Right-click
on the system tray icon to Explore BT devices, configure your
setup and start BT communications with devices you've already
discovered. The configuration program is a multi-tabbed interface
that allows to set security, filter which devices can communicate
with your desktop/notebook, setup fax and dial-up networking
services, file sharing and assign serial ports to legacy devices.
Once you've
discovered your devices, you can right-click on the system tray icon
and use the "Services" hierarchical menu to quickly start
LAN Networking (if you have a BT access point), file transfer, fax,
dialup networking and etc.. The "My Bluetooth Places" on
the desktop works like Network Neighborhood, but instead shows you
BT devices in range, allows you to explore for new devices and add
them to your "neighborhood". These tools are very user-friendly.
You'll also notice that Windows creates a new LAN connection with the
network card listed as Bluetooth LAN Access Server Driver. It runs
the same protocols as most commonly configured Ethernet cards: Client
for MS Networks, File and Printer Sharing, TCP/IP and NetBUI.
The adapter
works well for ActiveSync (remember to set ActiveSync on the desktop
to include the FriendlyNet's serial port under Connection Settings),
and with Palm Desktop HotSyncing.
On the Mac,
simply plug in the adapter, and you're ready to use Mac OS X's Bluetooth
control panel to start making connections to Bluetooth devices. The
adapter worked well syncing to Palm PDAs with Bluetooth and with the
ENR Tech Bluetooth 56k dialup modem.
