Bryce Yehl

Saturday night I schlepped back to the Sunrise CompUSA and found their hidden stash Bluetooth products — behind the PDA counter, locked behind glass, on the bottom shelf. I snagged USB and CompactFlash adapters from Ambicom.

They both work, to varying degrees.

On the PDA side, I can’t get Ambicom’s Phonebook / SMS software to work. Establishing an ActiveSync session requires running a utility that operates sporadically at best. When it does run, I then have to tell it which Bluetooth node to sync with — every time.

On the PC end, the driver only provides one virtual COM port. I can use it for ActiveSync or Nokia’s PC Suite, but not both. ActiveSync is unable to determine when the connection has been closed, so the first sync works but subsequent ones fail without manual intervention. Nokia’s PC Suite refuses to work with the virtual COM port.

But what’s really bad about the USB adapter is what it does to my CPU:

With my PC completely idle, nothing listening on the virtual COM port, I see 20% CPU utilization with massive spikes. With the Bluetooth adapter removed it hovers around 4%, no spikes. When I run Ambicom’s Bluetooth Explorer, utilization will sometimes soar to 100%, with the kernel kept so busy that ctrl-alt-delete and my mouse become unresponsive — I have to unplug the adapter to regain control of my PC.

I haven’t witnessed that sort of misbehavior since I switched to Windows NT six years ago.

The CompactFlash adapter is going back to CompUSA. I’ll swap it for a Belkin, their software package includes a tray utility to initiate ActiveSync that is smart enough to remember who it’s ActiveSync partner is.

And the USB adapter will go back too, I think I’ll give Belkin’s Class 1 adapter a shot. If that adapter doesn’t work, and it probably won’t since it uses the same software as their Class 2 adapter, I will hold my breath until Microsoft adds Bluetooth support to Windows.