Bluetooth has been one of those technologies that I have really wanted to embrace, but couldn’t find much of a use for it. Well, that issue has been resolved and I am glad to say that Bluetooth is treating me very well. I spent several hours trying to get things configured so that I could surf the web wirelessly at home with my Palm via Bluetooth and finally came off victorious! I can now surf the web via GPRS (through Bluetooth) when I am away from home and via Internet Connection Sharing (through Bluetooth) when I am home.
Connectivity is better than I feared it would be. Our home is pretty small and the Bluetooth coverage is just about perfect for connectivity without worrying about whether my neighbors or some wardriver are stealing my internet connection (which I have never been too paranoid about anyway). It works through the walls as well as upstairs and down. Only when I combine the floor with multiple walls between my USB Bluetooth dongle and my PDA do I lose the signal. It seems just as fast as 802.11b was on my iPAQ.
Now that I have it working, I think this is a great technology that is under-utilized. The whole notion of a PAN (Personal Area Network) has taken on new interest for me. Not only can I share my internet connection with my PDA, but I can sync over the same medium and the possibilities beyond that are exciting. I thought that the car PC’s (previous post) Bluetooth connectivity through GPRS was a great implementation of this technology. There really are a lot of uses for a low-power, close-range network connection. I guess now I need to buy a new Bluetooth mouse, keyboard, headphones . . .
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