Hi.

OK, the problem is this. I spend a lot of time on the phone at home nowadays, while working. This causes me some issues.

I can just use a phone normally (I have DECT cordless phones). This means I have only one hand free for long periods of time, causing me to either have to stop work completely or do it badly.

I can hold the phone under one ear with my shoulder, which invariably means that a couple of times a month I wake up the next day with excruciating pain from pulled muscles in my neck, which then takes several days to go.

I can use a wired headset plugged into the phone, but this either means the audio quality is awful (most headsets are crap, honestly), or if I get up and walk around with the only good headset I ever found, the wire eventually gets tangled in something and pulls the headset off, the phone out of my pocket, and on one memorable occasion nearly strangled me. Eventually the headset died under this treatment and I've never been able to find another one nearly as good.

I can ignore the phone or unplug it. This then means that most people try my mobile, and if I ignore or turn off that, I get lots of aggrieved email saying I'm not contactable and where the hell am I. The perils of being self-employed, you're on call 24/7 even if no one else is.

I can get a wireless headset, which would seem to be the best approach except that they all seem to cost a really silly amount, £100 and up for a phone with no dial pad and a fiddly interface for transferring calls (plantronics C65 seems to be the cheapest of these). The problem here seems to be that the manufacturers of such devices assume they are only of use to businesses, and that businesses have an unlimited budget for telecoms equipment. There aren't really any consumer device of this nature.

What I really want is a reasonably priced DECT phone with bluetooth, so I can use one of my existing bluetooth headsets with it. As far as I can tell no such thing exists. I can of course use Skype via the headset, but only to someone else with Skype. I don't want to use Skypeout, as I already have a perfectly good phone deal that gives me free calls in the UK and very cheap calls to the rest of the world for a single, quite reasonable, flat fee per month.

I did get one of these the other day, which seemed like the answer, but unfortunately it seems to have dire problems. I have tried it with three different headsets, and the only one it works even half-way decently with is the one that also seems to give the worst audio quality. The other two just turn themselves off immediately after connecting, behaviour they don't show either with the computer or mobile phone. I suspect a major bug in the bluetooth firmware on the adaptor. Even the one that works doesn't work properly, as the connect/disconnect button on the headset only works for one operation per call. For instance, I can connect from the headset but not disconnect, or disconnect but not reconnect. It always works from the base station end, oddly.

Interestingly the adapter quite happily works with the bluetooth dongle for the PC as an audio gateway, allowing me to bridge from the computer to the land line. Unfortunately, all the headsets also want to be audio gateways rather than headsets, so I can't even go into the PC via a headset and out via a gateway. I don't know whether I could have two bluetooth dongles and therefore two audio gateways, but I suspect strongly that the answer is no. So, I guess the thing is headed for ebay.

Can anyone suggest a solution, or point me in the direction of something I missed?

pca