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The vision: You're cruising the freeway in your office onwheels and need to call a client. You slip on your Bluetoothheadset and voice-dial your cell phone. Later, your phonewirelessly zaps the day's contacts to your PC or printer.
Unfortunately, in real life, it's seldom that simple. Notall Bluetooth gadgets seem to speak the same dialect, says Gartner Inc. researchdirector William Clark--not without some fiddling on your part.
Gartner estimates that businesses will spend $70 per employeeper year working out the handshake and security settings ofBluetooth devices. Instead of supporting the kind of independentinteroperability testing that, say, Wi-Fi radios get, Bluetoothmanufacturers occasionally hold "unplug fests" to ferretout incompatibilities.
Most Bluetooth products ship with security turned on. But withso many different interfaces and default configurations, "Anaïve user could be walking around with the device wide openand not really know it," warns Clark.
Bluetooth chipset shipments are expected to double next year, to360 million, so Bluetooth isn't going away, and Microsoft'srecent support could lend the "standard" some uniformity.But you'll want to adopt a single company-wide profile and makesure everyone adheres to it, says Clark. Bluetooth still has a fewcavities to fill.
Daniel Tynan, a writer in Wilmington, North Carolina, writesabout technology for a variety of publications.
