I ran my bluetooth connectivity adventures using ITC BlueSoleil and here’s my experience :

Bluetooth connection is pretty descent. It won’t cost you more than Rs. 350 for a neat bluetooth dongle to allow your laptops to connect to your desktops. The configuration steps for bluetooth connection are fairly easy as well. You connect the dongle to PC, install drivers, make the device discoverable, seek your device (PC) from laptop, exchange passkeys and there… you’re now connected ! Share your PC’s existing internet connection, configure the network adapter settings and you’re on your way to surf the net off the bluetooth !!!

Simple it may be. But its SLOW. reminds of dialups. Forget the downloads, even PC-Laptop transfer speed is also low. You simply cant transfer files that are HUGE in filesize merely because such transfer will take HOURS and is not at all feasible to waste so much time. transfer of the same data via usb is a better option than on bluetooth connection.

Same goes for bluetooth internet. It is not good for streaming things online, downloading files that are larger than 2-4 MB or sending/receiving emails with descently bulky attachments. PLUS, you are definitely restricted by RANGE factor of the bluetooth dongle.

Now, I had some STRANGE requirement to go for a better connectivity solution. I wanted to teach things like Voice Chat and PC-to-PC calling to my parents. I did attempt to make do with bluetooth, but having a voice chat on the internet while sitting in the same room is just too much to handle.

I needed more range and preferably more speed to go further on Webcam features. Thus, after three months of bluetooth experience, I extended my arms (paws?) for the wireless router.

I happened to have some experience with configuring wireless internet connections at office. Wireless router configuration was not much of a hazzle. It completed in less than fifteen minutes with all necessary settings for port forwarding to support my website’s smooth running over this new thing routing network traffic.

now that I have these things set up, somewhere in the back of my mind, i’m planning to write tiny guides for bluetooth and/or wireless configurations. Currently am too lazy to do that.

Ultimately, why this post. The purpose of this post is less for bosting about the new device or my connectivity experiences. It’s more like I’m trying to justify the purchase of the device itself. Doesn’t really matter now, I’m connected, happy and wireless !!!

~JaguarNac~

I finally managed to share internet over bluetooth. Somehow, the internet connection sharing options did not turn up before i got two lan adapters on host PC. Internet over bluetooh is SLOW. yet fun as i can use it from ANYWHERE (almost) from me house.

here is what i had to do

• Connect bluetooth dongle to host, install drivers and stuff.
• Configure a Bluetooth PAN connection from Windows XP (host) control panel, assign it a static IPv4. (i used 192.168.1.2)
•  Use bluetooth search from laptop, find host computer and connect with passkey.
• Go to network connectionson laptop, change the properties for Bluetooth Personal Area Network, (i used 192.168.1.3)
• Put host computer IP for default gateway (192.168.1.2)
• For preferred DNS, use the settings provided by ISP.

that should do.

I am still not able to transfer files over the established network… will need to do so somehow.

Meanwhile, my computer suddenly detected some ‘tonga’ infections. Scared hell out off me… I disabled sharing and stuff, scanned the system, should be good now

Anywayz, i gotta reach college now, Ciao !!

~JaguarNac~

For las couple of days, i was busy configuring my laptop, PC, Phone and bluetooth network to work in absolute harmony,
however… Now, I sit with my laptop, connected directly to my PC with a cable through an ethernet adapter forming a tiny little LAN.

I could not (yet) get bluetooth Personal Area Network working completely fine on these PCs. I am able to access both PCs via bluetooth PAN but not able to copy items here and there. Till now, I was also unable to produce the internet connection sharing option on the “Advanced” tab of my internet connection properties, however after installing second ethernet adapter, the option miraculously turned up and the connection got shared

Overall, lappy feels GOOD !! It’s HP Pavillion 2701 with 1.6 GHz Intel Dual-Core, 160gig harddrive, 1gig of ram, Intel GMA for graphics and all those bundled things like bluetooth, card reader, dual layer DVD RW, wireless lan, various slots to insert “things” and a fingerprint reader  ….

Overall, I’m enjoying the feel of “lappy” on my laps and feeling tottttally happy about it.

cheers

~JaguarNac~