Bluetake USB Dongle

Bluetake’s software makes using this product so easy. Any idiot could very easily double click their way through setting this up. With me, I installed it on my primary desktop and my laptop. The instructions warn to install the software before installing the hardware. This made good sense to me considering that I doubt Windows 98 knows what the heck to do with a Bluetooth adapter without the drivers. For the desktop I installed it as a “desktop” and for my laptop I installed it as a, you guessed it, “laptop”. These labeling settings are not explained in Bluetake’s instructions but I assume it is related to the software it installs on the box. Click through the usual default installation location screens and reboot the system. After that, two new icons appear. One icon in your system tray and one on the desktop. The one on the system tray lets you configure your settings, and the one on the desktop is your “Bluetooth neighborhood” this is where your Bluetooth devices will show up. Installation was as hard as putting a piece of bread in a toaster. You just plug the thing in to an open USB port.

Bluetake’s instructions are very good for setting up the various services it provides so I won’t go into setting them up as much as I will the actual usability of them.

Transfer files between PCs

The thing you have to remember with these Bluetooth adapters, is that they are working at 1Mbps. This is slow by most networking standards. The Ethernet jack on the back of your cable modem or DSL modem is at 10Mbps and a 56k modem is.. well.. 56k.   So 1Mbps is roughly twenty times as fast as a dial-up connection. This may sound fast but it isn't in the world of 10/100 mbps networking. On the bright side, file transfers are very easy and effortless. It is a drag and drop operation that we are all familiar with.

Dial-up networking and fax sharing

My days of dial-up are long behind me but the theory is this. You use your host computers modem as if it was installed on your own box. The Bluetake software installs all the necessary drivers on your box and it appears that it is in the local box. The fax software sees the modem the same way. You can also use this with certain Bluetooth enabled cellular phones. I can think of several mobile offices that could benefit from this alone.

Share a network connection

This is the item I was really looking forward to messing with. There is one part of my house that I have been unsuccessful in putting wire to for my home network. So a wireless connection is perfect. If this is the only thing you are buying this for, don’t. It is slow.  I say this because it is not a 10/100 mbps connection. However, my wife used this connection for over a week to do our online banking and didn’t even realize it. As you can see, slow is a relative term. 

Information exchange/synchronization

This is very similar to the way you “beam” a business card with a Palm pilot. I personally do not see myself using this option at all but I can imagine a large conference room somewhere in the world where this could come in handy. The major downside to this is that it only works with Outlook items (.vcf, .vcd, .vcs, .vnt, and .vmg file types) and there are a lot of anti-Microsoft people out there.

Point to multipoint connection (1 Server up to 7 clients)

You can setup an 8-node network with Bluetake’s USB dongle. Bluetake’s software also provides for security and encryption. You can set these things up to talk to any and every Bluetooth adapter or only to the adapters you specify. This provides you with a good level of protection being that without it you could be a victim from a random drive by network hijack (net-jack?) Or even just a nosey, technically perceptive neighbor.

Conclusion

To summarize my thoughts of the Bluetake USB Dongle, I love it. I think it could be a great toy for someone like me. However, I would hate to see someone not fully understand what it can actually do. It does everything I have listed here, maybe even a few things I didn’t play with, and it does them VERY well. It does it EXACTLY as it described in all of the sales information. Which is not always the case with some items you find on store shelves.  On the downside, it does its thing slowly in comparison to normal networks. I also feel the need to bring up the other wireless network devices out there that transmit at 11Mbps are about $80-100 per adapter. The price of the Bluetake USB Dongle is in the high side of this ball park but since this is a review only piece, and the item is not sold in stores…yet, we could see some slightly lower prices. However I would hope it would sell for less than the above mentioned 11Mbps adapters simply because of its lack of speed.  The flip side of this is that the Bluetooth Technology is just starting to really hit the streets and we all have seen what has happened to DVD prices. 

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