My experiences so far have not endeared me to the Bluetooth technology.

Bluetooth works very well for me so far in my experiences. I also know the reason for this. On the Windows side, the biggest problem is the lack of a standard. Every bluetooth adaptor comes with its own bluetooth stack, and thus there are many variants. HID support is something pretty new, and not all vendors have updated their stack. The other problem is that since every vendor has their own bluetooth stack, there really isn't any consistancy in the interface and how things work. It's a broken mess, and it dosen't look like MS is going to fix it anytime soon. Had USB support been the same on Windows, I could see similar disasters.

Now then, the proper way to do this. Apple implemented a standard bluetooth stack into Mac OS X, and included support for several bluetooth adaptors. If another vendor wants to release a Mac compatible bluetooth adaptor, they write a driver to talk to the built in bluetooth stack, and enjoy having the same end user experience as every other adaptor. I bought a DLink adaptor that is both Mac and PC compatible. After tinkering with it for a bit on my PC laptop, I saw no point in dealing with it. On the Mac side, I plugged it in, and system preferences showed a new bluetooth icon. It simply worked. I then paired my phone, and had immediate use of iSync to keep my phone in sync with the computer address book and calendar. After that, I installed the SEC program when it was in beta, and promptly bought it. It allows me to use the phone as a proximity sensor, and any scriptable event can be run, such as starting my screensaver when I leave.

From here, I plan on getting an iPaq with Bluetooth. I will sync it via my Mac as well (via iSync), and also use my phone and the iPaq to browse the web at 56k speeds. I also want to get a bluetooth hands free kit for the car, and possibly a bluetooth headset.

Yet another one of the many reasons I switched away from Windows.