If you’re like me, you mostly use bluetooth on one of those high-tech looking wireless headsets for your phone. Every once in a blue moon when I get bored with my current ringtone, or if I want to get some pictures off my phone I use the OBEX feature to transfer files to and from my phone from a computer. I recently had this urge while using a new laptop from work running Vista. Windows XP had some limited bluetooth support, so I figured things would be better in the latest version. Perhaps my Mac has spoiled me, but I was expecting a lot more than I got. While there’s actually some built-in control panel tools, the functionality is essentially the same as XP. You’re only built-in option for file transfers is the antiquated send/receive file option. This is how you would have transferred a file via IR on a pair of PDAs about 10 years ago. Finally in frustration I turned to google which pointed me to a shareware program from Medieval Software. Their OBEX file transfer program did the trick. Still, when I could do all of this on a 5-year old Mac with the built-in tools in OS 10.4, it was disappointing.

note: if you happen to turn off the bluetooth adapter in Vista and then can’t find the notification icon that turns it back on, check the properties of your start menu. When I disabled the bluetooth adapter on my Dell D620, the icon became inactive and got hidden. To get it back I had to uncheck the “hide inactive icons” option on the “Notification Area” tab of the start menu properties page.