Bluetooth Devices, Dongles & Built-In Bluetooth on Laptops

[jakatz]

This may seem like a obvious question to some, but BlueTooth, as good a technology as it appears to be, seems to be hassle.

Can someone explain to me if / why I cannot take ANY BlueTooth mouse (for example), and connect it wirelessly to a Dell laptop that has a built-in BlueTooth card / transceiver. Except for a few input devices which claim to "not need" a seperate propreitary dongle, all the BlueTooth input devices I am familar with require the seperate included dongle regardless of whether or not BlueTooth is built-in to the laptop or PC.
To me, it seems counter-intuitive to use a dongle when there is a potential for built-in connectivity.

Secondly, the other thing that appears to turn me off about BlueTooth input devices for a laptop in particular is when you pack up the laptop, thus removing it from the range of the input device, and then later, return with the laptop and turn it on, I have not been able to successfully have the laptop discover the preivously configured BlueTooth device automatically upon boot up of the laptop -- thus making it so that I had to tell the laptop to look for the device yet again or/and (in a worst case scenario), bond with the device yet again. Am I doing something wrong or is this just the nature of the beast?

Any knowledgeable input would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[LtLeary]

I have a Dell XPS (Gen 1) laptop with the BT355 module installed.

To date, I have successfully used my Microsoft Bluetooth Elite Desktop (keyboard and mouse), a Microsoft Notebook 8000 mouse, a Logitech Bluetooth Notebook mouse as well as a Logitech Bluetooth MX900 Mouse and Keyboard. Lets not forget my Jabra 200, 250 and 800 headsets and Verizon V710 and 700W cell phones and I have NEVER used the Bluetooth transceivers that came with the devices.

I point this out only to show that Bluetooth can work quite well in a multi-vendor environment.

Having said that, there are a few that have a few problems (the most frustrating one to date that I have seen is a Plantronics Voyager 500 headset but that is about it so far.)

If you have a specific setup you want help with, please provide some detail and I'm sure someone can help out.

LT