Archive for September, 2008

So I’ve been beating my head against the wall for the past few weeks as I get fully Bluetooth engaged. So let’s evaluate the hardware here. I have:

- Dell Precision M4300 Laptop
- Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000
- New Jawbone
- Verizon Blackberry 8830 World Edition

And I want EVERYTHING to be connected together. The goal here is that my mouse will be wireless to enable me a workspace not cluttered by wires. Since I commute in and out of Chicago, there are times when I need to dial into the office and the USB cable just sometimes doesn’t cut it, so I need something that doesn’t require USB cables going all over the place–especially on the train when there’s no space at all to do that! I use Skype to make calls as it’s cheap to make calls to the UK and fairly decent on regular calls domestically. In the current iteration I hook up an analog Plantronics headset with no noise cancellation so people can hear EVERYTHING in the background. Also I want a device that I can use on my Blackberry as it’s a pain to keep that thing propped to my head–especially on long conference calls, on the train, in the car, or on the move as I walk the streets of Chicago.

So those are the things that I needed. Now the problem–the only device I could pair with my laptop was my mouse. When I tried to pair my Jawbone, it would get through the normal process of pairing, but I would get an error:

Connection failed due to driver preparation failure

And I couldn’t get my Blackberry to pair at all. My Jawbone does pair with my Blackberry.

Now the first thing you need to do is look at your bluetooth manager stack that you are running. On my laptop, I had version 4.0.x installed. This was no good. So after a contact to Dell, I was pointed to a new version for the laptop, click here.

This will download: Dell Wireless 360 Module with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, which is compatible with:

You want to close your Bluetooth Manager, and during the install you will loose all your current pairing, but afterwards, the stack will be version: 6.01.03(D). Once it’s installed, I paired my mouse, no problem there. Then I paired the Jawbone, and to my surprise, it paired without any errors!

Next came the Blackberry. This was a bit more challenging. What’s strange was that I was asked a passkey on both the Blackberry then the laptop. On each, I used 0000 as the passkey and after that, everything paired properly.

Then you have to launch the Verizon connection software and go through the Wizard to select Bluetooth device. After this process, everything works fine, I can get online and ALL my devices are interconnected via Bluetooth! Any problems, let me know!