Product Reviews

If there's a technology that's on the cutting edge of the Mac at the moment, it's Bluetooth - a short-range (up to 10m, although in practice it's less) wireless standard that's designed to replace the kind of cable clutter that's endemic on the average computer desk.

Although peripheral makers of all kinds are including Bluetooth support in future products, it's the mobile phone manufacturers that are currently leading the way with products equipped with Bluetooth capability. Most high-end mobile phones now come with the ability to link up with a computer containing Bluetooth, swapping contact information and using the phone as a mobile modem.

At the moment, there are no Macs that come with Bluetooth built-in, but Apple is supplying the D-Link DWB-120M USB Bluetooth Adapter through dealers and the Apple Store. This is a small device that plugs in to a spare USB port, and takes advantage of the Bluetooth support built into Mac OS X 10.2, or available for download for older versions.

There's no support for Mac OS 9 or other older versions, and the product itself comes without software, which means that unless you're running OS X 10.2, you have to download the software from Apple's Web site. However, the adaptor itself is nicely priced at £35.

We tested the product using OS X 10.2 and two phones, a Sony Ericsson T68i and a Nokia 6310i, both connected to the T-Mobile network. When plugging the adaptor in to an iBook,

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it was immediately recognised, and we were able to go to the Bluetooth preference pane and start to configure.

With any Bluetooth device, the first thing you have to do is get them talking to each other by 'pairing' them. Neither phone proved to be entirely trouble free. With the Sony Ericsson, hitting 'Accept' on the phone failed to work - instead, you have to use 'Accept and add' to allow the two devices to see each other. Even after this, the two devices would occasionally stop talking to each other (usually after putting the iBook to sleep) and we'd have to re-pair. The Nokia failed to work completely at first. Checking a few Bluetooth-related mailing lists, we found that it required a firmware upgrade to work with the Mac (this should be free at any Nokia service centre). However, once upgraded, it worked flawlessly.

On call

In use, Bluetooth is impressive. Apple's software includes integration with the Address Book application that allows you to call or SMS anyone directly, and acts as a caller ID system showing you on screen who's calling, and letting you reject calls - all without touching the phone. This alone is worth the money for many people. Using the phone as a modem for connecting to the Internet proved to be more problematic. For both phones, we had to fiddle with settings in the preference pane to get it to work.

With cutting-edgetechnologies, there's always a kind of gratefulness when you find something that actually functions. There's no doubt that the D-Link DWB-120M USB Bluetooth Adapter works. But the extent to which you have to fiddle with software to get everything functioning if you're using anything beyond the exact setup that Apple has in mind, shows that Bluetooth on the Mac has some way to go.

However, this is all fixable in software, and as Bluetooth support develops in OS X, it will get easier. If you want to be on the cutting edge, the D-Link DWB-120M USB Bluetooth Adapter is a good way to start playing with Bluetooth now - and it might even prove useful.