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The Package

Along with the dongle the USB adapter, Bluetake includes a driver CD for the dongle, a power adapter for the USB printer adapter and a few quickstart guides for both the printer adapter and the dongle. For Mac OSX users, one of the quickstart guides is for OSX and OSX users can take this oppurtunity about how Windows users require twice the amount of documentation.

For those that already have a Bluetooth enabled PC, laptop or PDA, all that is needed is the BT210 unit. For the others just dipping their toes into the Bluetooth waters, the combo kit is required (or any other choice of a Bluetooth adapter).

Installation

As far as physical hardware installations go this is about as easy as it gets. Pull the USB cable from the printer and pop the USB adapter in. AC adapter to the to the Bluetake USB unit and on the printer side things are ready to go. The power and data transfer LEDs on the unit face in towards the printer though. It would probably be more useful if they were on the outside, facing away from the printer.

On the computer side, slide the dongle. Watch it light blue. It looks cool but I can't help but think how annoying that can get at night with the glow. It is a great indicator for whether the device is working or not but in the next iteration, maybe include a switch to turn the LED off.

Windows does not support bluetooth devices natively so the driver CD makes a trip into the optical drive. Installation is pretty straight-forward. One of the mistakes I made was assuming that the setup was complete after the drivers were installed. Nope. A "My Bluetooth Places" icon appears on the desktop. Start that up and follow the directions. For the printer, there is nothing that needs to be changed. Do a search for Bluetooth devices in range and the BT210 should be picked up.

The journey now heads to the Printers and Faxes section of the Control Panel. Add a new local printer and select the define your own port option which should list Bluetooth as one of the selections. Windows will prompt for the printer model and this should just about complete the setup. (Note that drivers are still required for the printer. The BT device just provides a new port type and not the actual printer driver). Hit the print test page option and cross the fingers. If a test page does not come through, double check the My Bluetooth Places menu and make sure that a Bluetooth printer is detected.

A couple minor annoyances - I know task tray icons drive some people bananas. Bluetooth adds one or two icons to tray. One is the My Bluetooth Places icon (user selectable off during the install process) and a network cable unplugged icon as Bluetooth is a networking device. I removed networking and dial up connections as start up types but the icon still persists. Grrr.