my pointless little quest

*WARNING: GEEKY TECH POST*

yes i was actually on a pointless little quest for the past weeks. i've been trying to locate and purchase a little item that is more of a technological gadget than anything. it's in fact a humble bluetooth dongle. it'd seem like there's nothing special about it at first glance, i know. but i'll have you know that, the first bluetooth dongle i'd bought before (which is frankly the smallest piece of gadget i have in my keypouch that i bring along with me everywhere i go) is somewhat different from this one i'd been looking for. that's because it was built with the firmware from IVT Corp. suppose you might have heard of them and their BlueSoleil software before. the short of it is, the devices having their BlueSoleil firmware built into them are not compatible with the widcomm (now known as broadcom/billionton) and microsoft version. the latter 2 amazingly seem to be compatible somehow.

so the whole point of my search for this elusive bluetooth having widcomm/microsoft firmware? i'd wanted to plug the bluetooth dongle into my printers (both HP printers are amazingly bluetooth-enabled) so that i can print direct from our phones straight to them! all that, without the need for any desktop/laptop computers as proxies!

i've been to sim lim square to source for this object of *cough* desire for several times during lunch hour now, but i've finally managed to find it. we were out and about at that techie's haven this afternoon, and after some ambiguous finds, we finally chanced upon one candidate! the first how i managed to figure out all this was while i did my homework on the subject. my first bluetooth dongle was using the IVT's BlueSoleil software on my computer, whereas my brother's dongle had this affinity with WinXP such that the OS seemed to have a driver built-in for it. that made a difference when i plugged in both the dongles into my printer as it seemed the printer preferred my brother's dongle very much than my own. *ahem i digressed* i also had a colleague that was using something quite similar, in that his bluetooth also played nice with Windows without the need for an extra software, and that his was an OEM of this manufacturer named Billionton that strangely was using the microsoft firmware for their bluetooth. and stranger still, i decided to take the chance and get it just for that reason.

i'm glad now that i did. because it works! and whilst being on my little mission, i manage to learn just that little bit more about bluetooth that i would have without. ^^;;

on a less geeky note, i'm proud of rachie =x because she took her first attempt at making cookies today. and although it was somehow a failed experiment, the better ones were quite cookie-ishly crunchy! =D

*:9*