Bluetooth mini-review

[Jack Rodgers]

Yesterday I had an informal Bluetooth event with a 12" & 17" Powerbook 
and my tibook with the D-Link bluetooth adapter.

Warning: the Jaguar defaults are for no file sharing and firewall 
turned on and bluetooth off. If you allow personal filesharing and turn 
off the firewall, which you have to do to use Bluetooth between 
computers, and turn bluetooth on, then anyone nearby with Bluetooth has 
the ability to upload any file to your computer or download any file 
from your computer, if you do not protect yourself. It works similar to 
having filesharing turned on while connected to an ethernet network.

We viewed the hard drive of all of the books, transfered files and 
copied files. The directory window is not an X window and acts more 
like an OS 9 window. It also acts like iDisk window or the Adobe GoLive 
web site browser in that it is slow, does not remember the last file 
list it showed and must build the hierarchy with each click. Not 
something you'd want to do very often if you get nervous and fidgety 
when something is quite slow.

But, it works...

Wifi is so much faster that I can't see anyone wanting to use Bluetooth 
for computer to computer connections. I don't know how practical it is 
for printing since we didn't try that. For automatic syncing of your 
calendar and phone, it might be just right.

Bluetooth is so slow connecting that I don't see it replacing wifi as a 
network connection although it has some utility.

It will be a welcome addition for keyboards, pdas, digital still 
cameras, mice, trackpads, and such where the connections can be 
automated and the user kept out of the process.

Since we did not fully test all of the features, it may be that there 
is some 'hidden' set up we did not see that lets to Macs trade files 
quickly and easily.

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jackrodgers at earthlink.net
http://www.jackrodgers.com