Bluetooth USB 2.0 Micro Adapter Dongle

This mini 2.0 USB Blue Tooth dongle has potential but the bundled software ruins it. I paid about 5-6 bucks (including shipping) for it - the reseller had it to me in record time. At this price point, really, there was not much for me to lose and my expectations were not that high.

The dongle ships in a plastic pack with a mini CDROM. The mini CDROM has software (Bluesoleil 2.6.0.8) that enables Blue Tooth features that go beyond the basic Windows XP Blue Tooth capabilities, including A2DP (stereo music).

The dongle is tiny. I have an Acer Aspire One netbook and the dongle barely juts out from the side of the netbook - a clear improvement over my Targus Blue Tooth USB dongle, which is 1 1/2 inches long. This improvement, however, was the only improvement to be found.

When using this USB dongle in a Windows XP environment, you really have two choices:

1) Plug it in and let XP detect and install a generic Blue Tooth driver for the device
2) Install the Bluesoleil software

If you go with the XP drivers, you are going to be able to use a decent and stable set of features, such as a reliable Blue Tooth mouse connection.

If you go with the Bluesoleil software, it opens up the functionality of the device and provides additional features that the XP drivers don't support, such as stereo music.

The problem is, the Bluesoleil software is not good. The user interface is ugly and non-intuitive. You'll just have to install it to see for yourself. Additionally, the software is, by design, crippled. Per the help menu, patches and upgrades will cost you. You can purchase a full version that, among other things, removes the data transfer speed-cap so that you can listen to MP3s without hiccups.

Setting aside the fairly annoying and yet not deal-breaking aspects of the software is the fact that the software doesn't play well with the audio drivers of my Acer Aspire One netbook. If I try to open an audio gateway to my Motorola BT stereo headphones, the Aspire RealTek soundchip drivers crash and crash again. And that is if I can even get the software to agree to create an audio gateway; it doesn't seem to be able to do so reliably.

I searched for information regarding the Bluesoleil software and the majority of the search results returned ways to work around the issues and many results even outlined how to reconfigure competitive software packages to work with the dongle in order to circumnavigate the Bluesoleil software altogether. I tried every trick that was described. I found some success in working with different software hacks but the time I spent was not well spent.

Back to my old Targus BT dongle, it was about 25 bucks. I installed the included software (WIDCOMM) and it just works. Five minutes of fiddling and it all works. It's silver and pokes way out and is pretty lame looking, but it gives me no grief.

In the end, I guess if your time is worth nothing than the cheapo BT dongle is for you. However, if you want the BT dongle to just work out of the box with no issues for every application that you expect it to work for, do some research and pay for what you expect to receive.

I have to caveat that this dongle and the included software may be just fine for you. For me however, it did not meet my requirements which are: BT mouse, BT stereo headphones and BT cellphone connections. All at once. Without any issues. The Targus dongle does this and I guess I'll just live with its unfortunate form factor.

First unit received had a manufacturing defect that prevented the dongle from being attached to the usb port.

The replacement could not pair with other devices using Microsoft's bluetooth driver on XP(sp3) clean install. It also did not work with Microsoft's bluetooth driver on Vista x64. Also tried ubuntu linux 9.04 and also did not work.

After troubleshooting in ubuntu, the system log revealed that the device shuts down and restarts each time the bluetooth radio is used. And that was the apparent cause of pairing failures.

update: the device doesn't appear to use the Broadcom 2045 Chipset as stated in the detailed description. I installed the WIDCOMM bluetooth driver from Broadcom and it doesn't recognize the device.

Based on the couple other reviews, I thought that I would take a gamble on it. I needed something to connect my cell phone bluetooth headset to my computer for a VoIP setup needed for work. With little information and having never used bluetooth, I gambled and I won.

The dongle has a small foot print. The software is excellent. I was able to connect all my cell phones and the wireless headsets to the computer with out any problem. Further, I was able to integrate my wireless headsets to my VoIP application (Avaya IP Agent, in case anyone is wondering). I was pleasantly surprised to see that the device packaging says that it is VoIP capable. The software is easy to use.

Over all, I am very pleased with the device. For less than $10 and the small footprint, you can't go wrong using this device.

I recommend it to anyone looking for bluetooth USB adapter.