Bluetooth adapter portability...

[Don Tolson]

Am I just being too naive or is there something I'm just not getting???

I bought a bluetooth adapter for my laptop (F8T001 v2) from Belkin so I could get rid of the USB cable connection to my iPAQ 2215 (yes, I admit it, also to play with the new built in bluetooth in the iPAQ).

All is well and good, and within a very short time, my iPAQ is happily Activesyncing with my laptop sans cord.

Now, Belkin has come out with a bluetooth mouse for laptops (F8T041-B) that comes with its own bluetooth adapter. I think "Great, now I can get rid of another USB cable, and muti-use my existing bluetooth adapter." I contacted Belkin to see if the mouse would work with the adapter I bought and the reply was 'probably not, that's why we came out with another adapter.'

Does this seem silly to anyone else? Shouldn't one bluetooth adapter be the same as any other adapter to a bluetooth device? I realize Belkin probably had to write some sort of HID software for the mouse, but why make it adapter specific? Sheeezzz.

[Don Tolson]

Am I just being too naive or is there something I'm just not getting???

I bought a bluetooth adapter for my laptop (F8T001 v2) from Belkin so I could get rid of the USB cable connection to my iPAQ 2215 (yes, I admit it, also to play with the new built in bluetooth in the iPAQ).

All is well and good, and within a very short time, my iPAQ is happily Activesyncing with my laptop sans cord.

Now, Belkin has come out with a bluetooth mouse for laptops (F8T041-B) that comes with its own bluetooth adapter. I think "Great, now I can get rid of another USB cable, and muti-use my existing bluetooth adapter." I contacted Belkin to see if the mouse would work with the adapter I bought and the reply was 'probably not, that's why we came out with another adapter.'

Does this seem silly to anyone else? Shouldn't one bluetooth adapter be the same as any other adapter to a bluetooth device? I realize Belkin probably had to write some sort of HID software for the mouse, but why make it adapter specific? Sheeezzz.

[freitasm]

The mouse (and keyboard, and joystick) all use the HID (Human Interface Device) profile, which is only available with Widcomm drivers 1.4 and up. Belkin is shipping the new adapters with this version.

The drivers are not specific. Version 1.4 will happily work with the current adapters they have.

It's not clear if they'll release the updated driver for the previous versions. Probably, since the F8T001 v2 is just one month old in the market.

[Don Tolson]

I hope so. One of the reasons I went with Belkin was because they supported win2k. MS seems to require win xp.